frontline magazine 18-june-2010

FRONTLINEJUNE 18, 2010 INDIA’S NATIONAL MAGAZINE RS.20WWW.FRONTLINE.IN

Little to celebrateBereft of a progressive policy framework that guided its

first innings, the United Progressive Alliance drifts in power

ARCHAEOLOGY DHOLAVIRA

Harappan surprises 62SCIENCE BIOLOGY

Now, synthetic cell 130WORLD AFFAIRS THAILAND

Revolt & repression 48

V O L U M E 2 7 N U M B E R 1 2 J U N E 5 - 1 8 , 2 0 1 0 I S S N 0 9 7 0 - 1 7 1 0 W W W . F R O N T L I N E . I N

F R O N T L I N E 3

On the CoverPrime Minister Manmohan Singh andUPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in NewDelhi on May 12.

PHOTOGRAPHS: V.V. KRISHNAN

COVER DESIGN: U. UDAYA SHANKAR

Published by N. RAM, Kasturi Buildings,

859 & 860, Anna Salai, Chennai-600 002 and

Printed by P. Ranga Reddy at Kala Jyothi

Process Private Limited, Survey No. 185,

Kondapur, Ranga Reddy District-500 133,

Andhra Pradesh on behalf of Kasturi & Sons Ltd.,

Chennai-600 002.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: N. RAM (Editor responsible

for selection of news under the PRB Act). All

rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or

in part without written permission is prohibited.

e-mail: [email protected]

Frontline is not responsible for the content of

external Internet sites.

DISASTERTragic touchdown 24Runway overrun 29

POLITICSNitin Gadkari: Faltering first steps 32

DEVELOPMENT ISSUESOrissa’s bulldozer regime 34Battle for survival in Niyamgiri 37Maoist presence? 40A protest in Jaitapur 41Interview: C.B. Jain, Project Director, JNPP 42

AGRICULTUREFood or alcohol? 45

WORLD AFFAIRSThailand: Final assault 48The military route 50India & Japan: Quiet approach 53South Africa: Cup that cheers? 56

ARCHAEOLOGYThe rise and fall of a Harappan city 62Inscriptions on stone and wood 68Cist burial 71

SPOTLIGHTAssam Rifles 89

REPORTSILO on child labour 97

THE JUDICIARYBringing clarity on reservations 103In public interest 106

THE STATESWest Bengal: Storm in the hills 111Manipur: The siege within 114

SRI LANKAA year later 117

FOCUS: EDUCATION IN MYSORECentre of learning 120

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYNow, a synthetic cell 130

COLUMNPraful Bidwai: Questionable link 94Jayati Ghosh: Regulation is in 100R.K. Raghavan: Crime calculations 109

UPDATEAgeing Germany 61

BOOKS 74

LETTERS 128

COVER STORY Adrift and listlessThe United Progressive Alliance govern-ment has no reason to celebrate as it com-pletes the first year of its second term ingovernment. 4

RELATED STORIES

The economy: Free right turn 7Infrastructure:Miles to go 10"Lack of political will":

Aruna Roy 14Internal security:Strategic blunders 17Foreign policy:Unipolar dilemmas 20

WORLD AFFAIRSThe Thai military cracksdown on pro-Thaksinprotesters in Bangkok,triggering an unprecedentedwave of arson. 48

ARCHAEOLOGYDholavira tells the story of a civilisation thatflourished across India,Pakistan and Afghanistan. 62

SCIENCE &TECHNOLOGYA milestone in biology isreached as scientistsrecreate an existing form of bacterial life. 130

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

4 F R O N T L I N E

PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh’s first officialpress conference in four years, held on May 24 tocoincide with the first anniversary of the UnitedProgressive Alliance (UPA) government’s second in-nings, turned out to be a kind of political metaphorfor its style of functioning. Political commentatorstermed it “lacklustre”, “listless”, “directionless” and“rambling”. These epithets were not far off the mark.For, the Prime Minister failed not only to come upwith a creditable presentation of the government’srecord of the past one year but also to make anysignificant projection for the future. In short, it was aperformance disappointing even to many leadersand workers in the Congress, the leading constituentof the UPA.

A former Union Minister of the Congress toldFrontline that it was only appropriate that the pressconference turned out to be a non-event as it was atrue reflection of governance in the past one year.“An objective assessment of UPA-II’s year one willshow that we have failed to build on the achieve-ments of UPA-I in almost all sectors of government,and hence this should be a time for introspection andnot celebration,” he said, adding rather wryly that itwas even more appropriate that the celebratory din-ner scheduled for the night before the press confer-ence had been cancelled.

“It was cancelled on account of the aircraft acci-dent in Mangalore that killed over 150, but the gov-ernment’s failure in controlling the rise in the pricesof essential commodities has been leading hundredsto death day after day. In such a situation did the

leaders of the Congress and other parties in the UPAhave any right to plan for a celebratory dinner?” heasked.

According to A.B. Bardhan, general secretary ofthe Communist Party of India (CPI), the real importof this mood of dissatisfaction even among sectionsof the Congress and the UPA can be best understood

Adrift and listlThe United Progressive Alliance has no reason to celebrate as it completes the

first year of its second term in government. B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N IN NEW DELHI

Cover Story

UPA-II has failed to build on theachievements UPA-I made in manysectors aided by a comprehensiveCommon Minimum Programme andthe corrective influence of the Left,which supported it from outside.

essJ U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 5

only in comparison with the mood thatprevailed in the UPA in May and Junelast year. “At that time, Ministers werevying with one another to announce100-day road maps for their Ministriesand departments. At the end of 100days itself, it was clear that the govern-ment had failed to fulfil its promises.Now, as we come close to crossing an-other 300 days, most of the Ministersand their political and administrativeassociates seem to have forgotten the100-day targets they had so grandly setfor themselves.”

Central to the proclamations madein May last year by various Ministerswas the Prime Minister’s assertionthat the guiding principle of UPA-IIwould be to take the country out of thefallout of the global financial crisis andat the same time enhance and streng-then inclusive governance so as to ben-efit a large section of theunderprivileged. He also announcedan austerity drive to be implementedby Ministers and their departments.Looking back at the past year’s trackrecord, it is clear that the governmentis far from fulfilling these overallobjectives.

E C O N O M I C S I T U A T I O NSeveral sections of the government, in-cluding Finance Minister PranabMukherjee, make periodic claimsabout having steered the country outof the negative impact of the globalfinancial crisis and about India beingon a growth trajectory, but consumerprice inflation has risen steeply – evenas high as 17 per cent.

Manmohan Singh’s emphasis oninclusive governance was perceived asa commitment to reinforcing UPA-I’sconstructive programmes such as theNational Rural Employment Guaran-tee Scheme (NREGS). Associateschemes to be strengthened includedthe Midday Meals Scheme and the In-tegrated Child Development Services.Another promise was to come up witha National Food Security Act (NFSA)and supplement it with an effectivepublic distribution system (PDS)across the country. The NREGS wasrenamed the Mahatma Gandhi Na-

tional Rural Employment GuaranteeScheme (MGNREGS), but that by it-self was of no help in improving itsimplementation.

Close observers of the MGNREGS,like Reethika Khera who is associatedwith the Centre for Development Eco-nomics at the Delhi School of Econom-ics, point out that the scheme ismarred by lax implementation andcorruption in many States such as Bi-har, Gujarat, Jharkhand and UttarPradesh. And coming up with correc-tives has not been a priority with UPA–II. This lack of application was ex-posed starkly when socialanalyst-activists such as Aruna Royand Jean Dreze raised questions aboutthe very functioning of the CentralEmployment Guarantee Council andthe lack of political will the govern-ment has shown in addressing issuesrelating to the implementation of theNREGS. The story of the proposedNFSA is no different. According toprovisions in the draft Bill, the govern-ment proposes to give 25 kilograms ofgrain to families living below the pov-erty line (BPL) despite a SupremeCourt directive to give 35 kg of grainper BPL household. Demands by ac-tivists and experts for a correction inthe draft are yet to evoke a concreteresponse from the government.

The Women’s Reservation Bill wasperceived as a key piece of legislationin the empowerment of neglected sec-tions of society, and the governmentannounced that the enactment of theBill was one of its priorities. But heretoo, half-hearted measures led to thepassage of the Bill in the Rajya Sabhaamid high drama and stasis in the LokSabha later (Frontline, March 27-April 09, 2010). All these failures andhalf-measures were accentuated bysystematic malfunctioning of the in-ternal security establishment asbrought out by the rise in Maoistviolence.

C O R R U P T I O N C H A R G E SUPA-II, unlike its earlier avatar, hasbeen riddled with corruption chargesagainst a number of its Ministers. Oneof these, against Minister of State for

PRIME MINISTER MANMOHANSingh with United ProgressiveAlliance chairperson andCongress president Sonia Gandhiat the Mahatma Gandhi NREGSSammelan in New Delhi onFebruary 2.

RAM

ESH

SH

ARM

A

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

6 F R O N T L I N E

External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, inconnection with obtaining pecuniaryadvantage in the form of sweat equityfor a friend in a franchise of the IndianPremier League (IPL), snowballed in-to a major controversy and led to hisresignation in April, barely a monthbefore the first anniversary of the gov-ernment.

There were four other Ministersfacing some allegation or the otherabout financial impropriety orwrongpolicy thrusts during the same time.They are Agriculture Minister SharadPawar, his colleague in the NationalistCongress Party and Civil AviationMinister Praful Patel, Home MinisterP. Chidambaram and Telecommuni-cations Minister A. Raja of the DravidaMunnetra Kazhagam.

Pawar and Patel were accused ofhaving obtained illicit pecuniary ad-vantage through IPL transactions andthe Chidambaram-led Home Ministrywas accused of ordering the tapping ofthe phones of opposition leaders suchas Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar,Communist Party of India (Marxist)general secretary Prakash Karat, Con-gress general secretary Digvijay Singhand Pawar. A. Raja was at the receivingend for allegedly causing colossal loss-es to the exchequer in the 2G spectrumallocation.

A number of politicians, includingsome senior Congress leaders, said thesituation resembled the political cli-mate that existed between 1984 and1989. In 1984, the Congress came topower with a thumping majority un-der the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, butcorruption charges and political alle-gations that came up in a span of threeyears reversed the credibility of thegovernment, and the party sank intodoom in the next general elections in1989. The controversies that had comeup during that period included thepassage of the Muslim personal lawBill and the opening of the locks of theBabri Masjid to Hindus for worship.The biggest corruption scandals, how-ever, involved the Bofors Howitzer andHDW submarine deals.

“This time too the Congress andthe UPA have come back to power

comfortably and large sections of theleadership seem to be suffering from akind of overconfidence. There is awhiff of 1984 in all this,” a senior Con-gress Member of Parliament toldFrontline in the days immediately fol-lowing Tharoor’s resignation.

‘ L A C K O F G U I D I N G P R I N C I P L E S ’Bardhan is of the view that the failuresin terms of advancing policy prioritiesand the charges about the conduct ofleaders indicate the absence of con-crete, well laid-out guiding principlesand organisational mechanisms totake governance forward. “In UPA-I,the government had such guidingprinciples in the Common MinimumProgramme [CMP] and an organisa-tional mechanism in the UPA-Left Co-ordination Committee. Of course,sections of the government did try sys-tematically to go beyond the brief ofthe CMP and the coordination com-mittee, but there were inherent checksand balances in it. What UPA-II islacking are these guiding principlesand controlling mechanisms,”Bard-han said.

Professor Sudhir Kumar Panwar, akeen political observer and presidentof the Kisan Jagriti Manch, a collectiveof activists and academics that ad-dresses the concerns of farmers, agreeswith Bardhan. He points out that inthe absence of a CMP, there is no syn-chronisation of government policy andthere is an atmosphere of ad hocism inthe government.

“The lack of synchronisation can beseen even within the Congress, not tospeak of other constituents in theUPA,” said Panwar. “That is why youhave Ministers talking out of turn in aforeign country, as Jairam Ramesh didwhen he accused the Indian HomeMinistry of being paranoid about giv-ing entry to Chinese firms, or as Chi-dambaram did when he talked abouthaving only a ‘limited mandate’ incombating Maoists.”

Panwar says the lack of an agreedpolicy and praxis framework makessmaller parties in the UPA mere rent-seekers who are happy as long they areallowed to do things of their choice in

the Ministry. “Such rent-seekers haveno commitment to evolving public pol-icy and are driven by their limited po-litical or even individual goals. A casein point is Railway Minister MamataBanerjee, who does not even deem it fitto come to Delhi to run her Ministryeven though the Prime Minister him-self is understood to have asked her togive up her Kolkata fixation,” he said.

According to Panwar, classical po-litical thought would naturally see thesigns of self-destruct in this climate,but UPA-II has a saving grace in the adhocism of the opposition too. “And it isthe spread of this ad hocism across thecounter that has allowed the UPA tosurvive and even sit prettyin the trea-sury benches,” he said. This conten-tion, obviously, has tremendous merit.Different types of ad hocism charac-terise different forces and streams inthe opposition.

The principal opposition, the Bha-ratiya Janata Party (BJP), is yet to re-gain its political and organisationalmoorings under new president NitinGadkari and is pursuing its own formof ad hocism. The Left parties havealso not succeeded in achieving theirproclaimed objective of evolving anon-Congress, non-BJP Third Frontbased on concrete principles and pol-icy understanding. Regional andsmaller parties such as the SamajwadiParty, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, theTelugu Desam Party and the Biju Ja-nata Dal have been alternately warm-ing up to the idea and getting coldabout it. These regional forces as wellas others like the Bahujan Samaj Partyhave opposed the UPA one day andsupported it another day.

Clearly, this ad hocism prevalentacross the board has helped UPA-IIchug along despite its obvious failuresand foibles. It needs to surmount big-ger political challenges in the days tocome, which include a series of electo-ral battles in the next two years in cru-cial States such as Bihar, West Bengal,Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.Whether the UPA brand of ad hocismwill prevail over others is a moot ques-tion in relation to these upcoming po-litical battles. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 7

years of that decade, the state’s role as a driver ofeconomic growth, a regulator of private investorsand an agent working to reduce inequalities of vari-ous kinds was altered. Regulatory intervention wassubstantially diluted or dismantled, the state wasincreasingly presented as a facilitator of private ini-tiative, and through various acts of omission andcommission the government contributed to a shift inthe distribution of income in favour of asset ownersand a thin upper crust of the middle class.

Even though this shift was initially presented asthe result of the requirements and conditions set by

AS the second United Progressive Alliance(UPA) government completes its first year in office,there are signs that 2009 could constitute a secondturning point in India’s post-Independence econom-ic history. UPA-II is different from its predecessorinasmuch as this coalition government, althoughstill led by the Congress and Prime Minister Manmo-han Singh, is not “hampered” by Left support forsurvival. It, therefore, was and is widely seen ascapable of adopting policies that could not be imple-mented by the previous government because of therole of the Left. Hence, at the end of year one of itstenure, attention is focussed on the direction policyis taking and whether the absence of the Left hasresulted in a significant shift or turning point ineconomic policy.

The first turning point was, of course, in 1991,when under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Raoand Finance Minister Manmohan Singh India expe-rienced a remarkable turn in its post-Independenceeconomic trajectory. The trigger for that turn was thebalance of payments crisis that resulted from a com-bination of trade liberalisation and deficit-financedgovernment spending. Yet, leveraging that balanceof payments crisis and the “inevitability” of relyingon the support of the International Monetary Fund(IMF), the government of the time embarked on apolicy road that fundamentally altered the country’sdevelopment path.

In a series of steps adopted over the subsequent

Economic management under UPA-II is characterised not just by a reduced commitment to redressinequality, but by a willingness to adopt initiatives that areinequalising.

The year 2009 may well be the second

turning point in India’s economy where

a few are enriched at the expense

of the poor. B Y C . P . C H A N D R A S E K H A R

A MIGRANT FAMILY outside an electronic goodsoutlet in Kolkata.

ARU

NAN

GSU

RO

Y C

HO

WD

HU

RY

Free right turnCover Story

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

8 F R O N T L I N E

the IMF in return for its support in theform of an SDR 5 billion loan, it soonbecame clear that the economic policyestablishment and a section of theCongress clearly favoured such poli-cies. The IMF loan, which in any casewas not used in full, appeared to bemore a ruse, providing these sectionswith the instrument needed to pushthrough policies that the people hadfor long been taught to distrust.

Not surprisingly, when the UPAcame to power in 2004 and Manmo-han Singh was made Prime Minister,the government was expected to pushahead with similar and even more rad-ical measures of liberalisation such asaccelerated privatisation, full convert-ibility on the capital account and dilu-tion of financial sector regulation.There was indeed movement in thesedirections under UPA-I. But the gov-ernment faced roadblocks at eachpoint and had to withdraw on a num-ber of occasions. Many measures fa-voured by the economic policyestablishment could not be imple-mented because of opposition from the

Left, support from which was crucial.Moreover, a tendency in the Con-

gress to publicly advocate pro-poorpolicies but do little to ensure theirimplementation, to adopt progressiverhetoric but ignore it in practice,proved difficult to sustain. Policiesthat were seen by the economic policyestablishment as good on paper or inpublic speeches but inappropriate and“a waste of money” on the ground, suchthe National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Scheme (NREGS), had tobe implemented once included in theCommon Minimum Programme(CMP) because of Left pressure.

This loss of full control over thelevers of policy was particularly dis-concerting for the advocates of “re-form”, because it was during UPA-I’stenure that some of the ostensible“benefits” of the reforms of the 1990swere beginning to be experienced.During the 1990s, after a brief periodof high growth during 1993-97, theeconomy experienced a slowdownwith only a moderate revival after theinjection of demand in the late 1990s

when the Fifth Pay Commission’s rec-ommendations were implemented.Compared with this, from 2003growth picked up substantially, and aneconomy that seemed to be falling offits 5-6 per cent annual growth trajec-tory moved on to a much higher, 8-9per cent growth path for a relativelylong period of time. That growth wasseen as having legitimised past reformand provided the case for furtherliberalisation.

The effect of the high growth wasthat although poverty and deprivationpersisted and were even increasing insome areas, the language of the UPAhad come to resemble the “India Shin-ing” slogan that spelt the downfall ofits predecessor, the National Demo-cratic Alliance (NDA). Fortunately forit, the CMP and the pressure exertedby the Left and sections of civil societyensured that it adopted at least somemeasures such as the NREGS and theRight to Information Act. This en-abled the Congress, to its own surprise,to become the single largest party inthe Lok Sabha and form a coalition

A VEGETABLE MARKET in Ahmedabad. India’s inflation was stuck at 9.9 per cent in March as food and fuel pricesrose sharply.

AJIT

SO

LAN

KI/A

P

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 9

government without relying on out-side support from the Left. But that didprovide the basis for a shift in policyfrom the so-called progressive policies,dismissed as “populism”, to the osten-sibly “technocratic” neoliberalism.

However, the first Union Budgetunder UPA-II did not reflect this shiftin full. One reason was, of course, therealisation within the Congress that itssurprise performance in the electionswas not unrelated to some of the osten-sible populism of the UPA-I govern-ment. This meant that it had to givemore credence to its own campaignpromises than it would have otherwisedone. The other important reason wasthat though the global financial andeconomic crisis had not overwhelmedIndia, it had slowed down the grossdomestic product (GDP) growth andadversely affected employment andlivelihoods, necessitating a responsefrom the government.

F I S C A L S T I M U L U SThe fiscal stimulus adopted in re-sponse to the crisis, combined with theimplementation of the Sixth Pay Com-mission’s recommendations, resultedin an expansionary fiscal stance. Thisdid benefit business inasmuch as itmoderated the impact of the crisis, in-creased demand in the economy andinjected liquidity, which supportedcredit-financed expenditures even in atime of crisis. India proved to be acountry that rode the crisis well. In-dustrial growth during financial year2009-10 is estimated at a creditable10.4 per cent compared with 2.8 percent in 2008-09. But for the fact thatthe growth of agricultural GDP is esti-mated at 0.2 per cent, the services ex-pansion facilitated by the Sixth PayCommission’s recommendationswould have taken aggregate GDPgrowth well beyond the advance esti-mate of 7.2 per cent for 2009-10.

One consequence of this perform-ance is that even the case for a furtherdose of populism based on the surpris-ing election results seems to have lostits strength. Policies such as the provi-sion of social security benefits for un-organised workers or guaranteeing

food security for all, which were mademuch of by the Congress propagandamachine, are being diluted and de-layed. Even with regard to those initia-tives that have been legislativelylaunched, such as the NREGS or Rightto Education, the actual funds allocat-ed in the UPA-II Budget point to acomplete lack of seriousness.

What is more, the cutback in allo-cations is being defended using thefact that the implementation of thePay Commission recommendationsand the announcement of a number ofstimulus packages in response to thecrisis have widened the fiscal deficit.Fiscal adjustment, the government ar-gues, is crucial. Not that it is seriousabout this either, judging by the taxconcessions it has provided in the Bud-get. An income tax-paying minorityhas been offered an unexpected bo-nanza through a widening of the in-come slabs subjected to different ratesof progressive taxation. In addition,the surcharge on corporate taxationhas been reduced from 10 to 7.5 percent. Not surprisingly, losses of directtax revenues are estimated at upwardsof Rs.25,000 crore. The Budget was inthis and other ways clearlyinequalising.

This process of contributing to in-equality is being intensified by hikes inadministered prices, including of in-termediates such as petroleum andgas, and by reductions in subsidies forfood and fertilizer. The increases inadministered prices would have cas-cading effects on prices across theeconomy, and the subsidy cuts wouldreduce the degree to which the govern-ment moderates inequalising tenden-cies in the economy. All this occurs in aperiod when the prices of essentials arealready rising sharply and the govern-ment appears to be doing little to haltthe price rise other than call uponState governments to come downheavily on hoarders and speculators.Finally, despite its rhetoric, the pat-tern of public spending as reflected inthe second Budget of the UPA-II gov-ernment points to further erosion ofreal spending on crucial social sectorprojects.

Overall, economic managementunder UPA-II is not just characterisedby a reduced commitment to redressinequality, but by a willingness toadopt initiatives that are very obvious-ly inequalising.

On the other hand, the willingnessof the government to accommodateand promote the interests of privatecapital is obvious. Access at relativelycheap rates to land, mineral and forestresources; easy access to credit fromthe public banking system for activ-ities that are even speculative in na-ture; public-private partnerships informs where the private sector is theprincipal beneficiary; a commitmentto accelerated privatisation of publicassets; liberalisation of the rules gov-erning the operation of financial enti-ties; and easy access to foreignexchange for forays by Indian capitalabroad are the many ways in whichUPA-II has been, and promises to con-tinue, supporting the private sector.The influence of private capital on gov-ernment decisions, in areas as diverseas gas pricing to regulation of mining,is palpable even if not always provable.

In the rush for quick profit that thisnew environment has generated, alle-gations of fraud and corruption havebecome routine. Whether it is the pub-lic sale of 2G spectrum or the privateorganisation of the Indian PremierLeague, allegations of huge profits inshort periods with little sweat have be-come common. Nobody is fooled anymore that “market-friendly”, neoliber-al policies promote greater transpar-ency and reduce rent-seeking. Theyonly seem to make the state a facil-itator of the private quest for profit,and sometimes a willing or uncon-scious accomplice in efforts at profi-teering.

With the Left wielding little influ-ence on its behaviour and four moreyears of power before it, UPA-II is in-tensifying its pursuit of such policies. Ifit persists in this direction, 2009 willindeed be a second turning point inIndia’s post-Independence economicevolution where the quick enrichmentof a few would be at the expense of thewell-being of the poor majority. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 F R O N T L I N E

ADEQUATE infrastructure is among the mostcritical physical requirements for attaining fast eco-nomic growth and for encouraging investment in thebackward regions of the country. The Planning Com-mission has suggested that the total investment ininfrastructure – electricity, roads and bridges, rail-ways, ports, airports, telecommunication, irrigation(including watershed development), water supplyand sanitation, and storage and gas distribution –will have to increase from the estimated 5.43 per centof the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006-07 to9.34 per cent of the GDP by the terminal year of theEleventh Plan (2011-12). However, the strategy envi-saged by the Planning Commission to step up in-frastructure investment in the country to more than9 per cent of the GDP by 2011-12 relies heavily ongreater investment by the private sector, whichmight remain elusive.

It is widely believed that India’s level of publicinvestment in infrastructure continues to be verylow. But policymakers at the Centre do not seem toshare the same view, perhaps because of their strongadherence to a conservative perspective on fiscalpolicy.

In this backdrop, the present article draws atten-tion to a number of concerns pertaining to the policypriorities of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)government for infrastructure sectors, in particular

the neglect of the infrastructure development needsof rural India.

However, before we highlight the specific con-cerns of rural India, it is worth noting that UPA-I’srecord with respect to infrastructure in general hadlittle to write home about. As is well known, aftercoming to power in 2004, the government set up acommittee on infrastructure comprising membersfrom different Ministries, which devoted a lot of timeto the preparation of blueprints and model agree-ments for infrastructure projects.

However, five years down the line, all thatshowed up in UPA-I’s track record on infrastructurewere unfulfilled promises, stalled projects and longdelays in the completion of projects. For instance,highways were ostensibly at the top of the shelfamong the key infrastructure sectors being pursuedby the government, but the 33,000 kilometres underthe National Highway Development Programme(NHDP) remained stalled at the end of UPA-I’sregime as private investors stayed away.

As regards UPA-II’s performance, clearly the ju-ry is still not out given that it has completed only the

Miles to go

All that showed up in UPA-I’s trackrecord on infrastructure wereunfulfilled promises, stalled projectsand long delays in the completion ofprojects. The UPA-II regime seemsto be struggling much harder thanUPA-I to get its act together.

The UPA government’s policies on infrastructure have not translated into any

substantial benefits for the poor. B Y P R A V E E N J H A

Cover Story

THE ROAD CONNECTING Arumbalpattu in PudurNadu Hills village and Singarappati in Tamil Nadu.

D. GOPALAKRISHNAN

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1

first year of its tenure. However, goingby its overall record of governance, theUPA-II regime seems much less pur-posive compared with its predecessorin its overall functioning. And, withregard to infrastructure, it seems to bestruggling much harder than UPA-I toget its act together.

N E G L E C T I N G R U R A L I N D I AIn India, where more than 80 per centof the population lives in rural areas,development of rural infrastructurecan play an important role in shapingthe growth of the entire economy. It isevident that the development of villag-es will contribute towards an inclusiveand sustained growth trajectory.When UPA-I came to power with sev-eral promises for rural India in its elec-tion manifesto, it was expected that itwould do a lot for the betterment of therural community in terms of providingrural connectivity and rural housing,creating other basic rural infrastruc-ture, and so on. But these promisesremained largely unfulfilled.

In its second tenure, the UPA gov-ernment seems to have displayed amarked deviation from its pro-poorcommitments (even at the level ofrhetoric). In fact, the 2009 electionmanifesto of the Congress pays atten-tion to the need for augmenting urban

infrastructure but not rural infrastruc-ture, which seems to be based on thepremise that even though the bulk ofthe country lives and works in villages,India is rapidly urbanising!

Among the various infrastructuralsectors mentioned, roads have a signif-icant positive impact on both urbanand rural populations. A study carriedout by the International Food PolicyResearch Institute (Research ReportNo. 110, IFPRI, Washington D.C.,1999) on linkages between govern-

ment expenditure and poverty in ruralIndia revealed that an investment ofRs.1 crore in roads lifts as many as1,650 poor people above the povertyline. Currently, the Union governmentis making investments in nationalhighways through the Central RoadFund and the National Highways Au-thority of India.

The combined allocation for theconstruction of national highways hasbeen increasing over the past threeyears – from Rs.12,999.56 crore in2009-10 (Revised Estimates) toRs.15,938.27 crore in 2010-11 (BudgetEstimates), that is, an almost 23 percent increase compared with the previ-ous year (Table 2). However, the allo-cations for the Pradhan Mantri GramSadak Yojana (PMGSY), which con-tinues to be the main channel throughwhich the Union government is in-vesting in rural roads, have gone up by

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


only 6 per cent in 2010-11 (BE) com-pared with the last year. It wouldhardly be an exaggeration to say thatthe overwhelming majority of Indians,living in the countryside, have seenlittle progress in their lives since theearly 1990s. Probably the most alarm-ing indicator of the crisis in India’scountryside has been suicide by farm-ers on a large scale.

According to the Central govern-ment’s own estimate, around 1,83,000farmers killed themselves between1997 and 2007, and there has been nolet-up from this macabre dance ofdeath in the subsequent period too.Over the last two decades, as the Cen-tre has tried consistently to push for-ward neoliberal economic policies, therural areas of the country have beenaffected adversely.

In fact the rural economy in gener-al has not got the attention that manyhad expected from the UPA govern-ment. Although UPA-I had stepped upinvestments in the rural economy inthe last couple of years of its tenure,UPA-II has not maintained the samelevel of priority (for the rural economy)in its two Union Budgets. The Uniongovernment’s total expenditure on therural economy (which includes expen-diture on agriculture and allied activ-ities, rural development, special areaprogrammes, irrigation and flood con-trol and village and small industries)registers a decline from 3.34 per centof the GDP in 2008-09 (Actuals) to2.59 per cent of the GDP in 2010-11(BE).

Coming specifically to rural infras-tructure, there can be little doubt thatimprovement in this sector is crucialfor broad-based inclusive growth ofthe economy and for bridging the ru-ral-urban divide in the country. How-ever, even after ten Five-Year Plans,huge gaps persist in rural infrastruc-ture across the country.

UPA-I initiated an umbrella pro-gramme called Bharat Nirman, anamalgamation of several ongoingschemes of the Centre, for the upgrad-ing of rural infrastructure. Its objec-tives were based on the gaps persistingin rural infrastructure in the country,

as reported by government agencies.These gaps were significant – 1,25,000villages and 23 million rural house-holds without any access to electricity;66,802 rural habitations without all-weather roads; at least 1,46,185 km ofnew rural roads needed; 55,067 ruralhabitations without access to safedrinking water; 10 million hectares ofagricultural land in need of irrigationcoverage; and 66,822 villages withouttelephone connectivity.

Acknowledging these major gapsin rural infrastructure, the PlanningCommission recommended in 2007that a total public investment ofRs.4,39,392 crore (by the Centre andthe States) would be required for ruralinfrastructure in the Eleventh Plan pe-riod (2007 to 2012).

However, the share of rural infras-tructure in the total public investmentrecommended for infrastructure in theEleventh Plan period (Rs.14,40,602crore) was a meagre 30.5 per cent. Thisindicates a continued neglect of theinfrastructure needs of rural India ascompared with that of urban India bypolicymakers at the Centre.

After the disastrous record of theNational Democratic Alliance (NDA)government with regard to addressingthe needs of rural India, which in facthad been among the main factors thatbrought the UPA to power in 2004,much was expected from the UPA.However, the UPA’s performance hasbeen well below the expectations andthe needs on the ground. The followingis a brief stocktaking of the UPA’s in-adequate commitments in the recentyears with respect to rural infrastruc-ture, and to illustrate this some of themajor flagship schemes have been tak-en into account.

P R A D H A N M A N T R I G R A M S A D A K Y O J A N AThe Bharat Nirman programme envi-saged a massive scaling up of habita-tion connectivity coverage in ruralIndia. To achieve the targets of theprogramme, 1,46,185 km of rural roadswere proposed to be constructed tobenefit 66,802 hitherto unconnectedhabitations in the country. In respect

of the hill States (the northeastern re-gion of India, Sikkim, Himachal Pra-desh, Jammu and Kashmir andUttarakhand) and the desert areas, theobjective was to connect habitationswith populations of 250 people andmore.

It also proposed to upgrade nearly1.94 lakh km of existing rural roads.According to the Outcome Budget ofthe Ministry of Rural Development,the PMGSY has shown considerablybetter utilisation of funds and achieve-ment of physical targets comparedwith all other schemes. While thescheme got a big fillip in allocation inthe 2009-10 Budget, the percentageincrease in allocation in 2010-11 hasbeen disappointing; a large number ofhabitations are yet to be covered underthe scheme. The situation is not muchdifferent in several other infrastructu-ral programmes in rural areas.

I N D I R A A W A A S Y O J A N AThe rural housing scheme is one of themajor initiatives of the Ministry of Ru-ral Development. The scheme got astrong impetus in 2008-09 with anincrease of 127 per cent over the previ-ous year’s budget allocation. With theEleventh Five Year Plan overtly target-ing 150 lakh houses for the rural poorduring the Plan period, it was expectedthat the impetus would continue.However, the allocation for thescheme for 2008-09 and 2009-10 re-mained the same with a marginal in-crease in the Union Budget 2010-11.The current Budget also saw an in-crease in the unit cost of provisioningrural housing for both plain areas andhilly areas. However, the lack of con-comitant increase in the total quan-tum of allocation for the schemeeffectively scales down the physicaltargets for rural housing in this finan-cial year.

N A T I O N A L R U R A L D R I N K I N GW A T E R P R O G R A M M EUnder Bharat Nirman, the funds util-ised for rural water supply wereRs.4,098 crore in 2005-06, Rs.4,560crore in 2006-07, Rs.6,441.69 crore in2007-08 and Rs.7,276.29 crore in

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


2008-09. In 2009-10, the Union gov-ernment made a budgetary provisionof Rs.8,000 crore. The goal is to coverall water-quality-affected habitationswith safe drinking water by the end of2011 (Economic Survey 2009-10).

However, a Comptroller and Audi-tor General (CAG) audit for the ruralwater supply programme (AcceleratedRural Water Supply Programme) re-vealed that 10 States were not able toprovide matching grants to the tune ofRs.2773.14 crore. There was under-utilisation of 45 per cent to 75 per centof financial assistance from the Centreto the States for the water supplyscheme between 2002 and 2007. Fur-ther, technology considerations, suste-nance of Nirmal Grams, andineffective and insufficient monitoringfor outcome measurement are someother issues that need to be tackled. Inaddition, concerns for inclusion, equi-ty and gender relations are not artic-ulated clearly in the policy guidelinesof the sector.

Allocation in the National RuralDrinking Water Programme shows anoverall increasing trend. However, theUnion government’s expenditure onrural water supply and sanitation, as aproportion of total expenditure fromthe Union Budget, is only 0.85 percent, which is lower than in the earlierperiods (Table 3).

Keeping in view the fact that thereare only two years for the EleventhFive Year Plan to end, it is pertinent tolook at whether the Plan allocationslaid out by the Union government atleast measure up to the proposed out-lay for the Eleventh Plan. As Table 4

shows, the Union government alloca-tion for rural water supply is around 78per cent and for rural sanitation it isaround 68 per cent in comparison withwhat was proposed in the Plan. Thesefigures are clearly not too far behindthe targeted trajectory, but the pro-posed outlays themselves remain areasof concern given the extent of relevantdeficits.

Even though the UPA government,in its second tenure, has accorded highpriority to urban infrastructure, itspolicies have not translated into anysubstantial benefits for the poor in ur-ban areas. Rather, it is believed thatthe infrastructure investments in theurban areas are primarily benefitingthe privileged classes.

For instance, as a recent studybrings out vividly, Delhi has witnessedevictions and demolitions of informalsettlements and slums in the run-up tothe Commonwealth Games (CWG). Alot of evictions are being carried out toconstruct roads, bridges, stadia andparking lots, or under the guise of city“beautification”, ostensibly to create a“world class” city.

The authorities are clearing streetvendors, rickshaw pullers, and otherworkers in the informal sector off theroads, and destroying livelihoods ofthe urban poor. Beggars and homelesscitizens are rounded up, arrested andarbitrarily detained under the BombayPrevention of Beggary Act 1959 (see“The Commonwealth Games: WhoseWealth? Whose Commons?”, Housing& Land Rights Network, 2010).

The above-mentioned study alsopoints to rampant exploitation of

workers at CWG construction sites –low pay, unsafe working conditions,lack of housing, use of child labour,non-registration of workers, and de-nial of social security benefits.

There can be little doubt about theneed to step up public investment ininfrastructure in the country. Howev-er, the conservative fiscal thinking ofthe policymakers at the Centre doesnot leave much scope for pursuingsuch an agenda.

The heavy reliance of the policy-makers on the private sector for step-ping up infrastructure investmentcould be misplaced. More importantly,the Central government needs to ac-cord much greater priority to the de-velopment of rural infrastructureinstead of presuming that rapid ur-banisation in the country is dilutingthe need for augmenting rural infras-tructure.

Moreover, the policy frameworkunderlying the infrastructure projectsin urban areas should also include thepoor, instead of catering to the de-mands of the privileged sections of theurban population. In this context,UPA-II perhaps needs to do a sub-stantial revamp of its assumptions,strategies and policy priorities for in-frastructure. �Praveen Jha is on the faculty of theCentre for Economic Studies andPlanning, Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, New Delhi. He is also theHonorary Economic Adviser to theCentre for Budget & GovernanceAccountability (CBGA), New Delhi.This piece draws on CBGA’s analysisof the Union Budget 2010-11.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Cover Story

ARUNA ROY, the promi-nent political and social activ-ist who spearheaded thecampaign to institute the Rightto Information Act in the1990s, is an ardent critic of theanti-people and exclusionarypolicies of the first and the sec-ond United Progressive Alli-ance governments.

A recipient of the RamonMagsaysay Award for commu-nity leadership in 2000, sheheads the Mazdoor KisanShakti Sangathana (a tradeunion of workers and peas-ants) in Rajasamand, Rajas-than, and is also a member ofthe Central EmploymentGuarantee Council.

In an e-mail interview toFrontline, she talked about thedecreasing social expenditureand lack of political will to implement properly in-clusive policies and schemes. Excerpts:

How different is UPA-II from UPA-I as far asspending on social infrastructure goes?

UPA-I had the National Common MinimumProgramme as a clearly mandated set of commit-ments to the people. It was in this context that the

intent of the government could be monitored. It alsogave space for focussed intervention by civil societyso that its views could be incorporated into policy.

UPA-II has a haphazard, ad-hoc and incoherentpolicy framework for social infrastructure and,therefore, it is difficult to monitor both policy andexpenditure.

Funding for the National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Scheme saw only a marginal increase inBudget 2010. Has UPA-II got a free hand to revert toits policy of liberalisation in the absence of the Leftparties’ role in the government? Or is it theimprovement in the global economy that makes

economic logic for thegovernment to spend less onsocial schemes?

The NREGS is demand-dri-ven. The government will haveto make available as much mon-ey as there is demand for work.But the government has not tak-en steps to institute processesthat will enable rural workers,who are crippled by the obviouslimitations of awareness, litera-cy, etc., to register their demandfor work with the panchayat.This is, perhaps, one of its big-gest failures.

In this context, the govern-ment has to be proactive andmake the programme run effec-tively. A specific example is thefact that there was no attempt toenergise the NREGS when therewere drought conditions in

parts of the country last year. The passive role of thegovernment needs to be questioned.

The problem with the NREGS now is the freez-ing of the wage at Rs.100. With inflation and spirall-ing prices of essential commodities, real wages arereduced drastically. There is no real voice of protestagainst the wage policy. The demand for linking thewage under the MGNREGS with the CPI [Consum-

‘Lacks political will’

“UPA-II has a haphazard, ad hocand incoherent policy framework for social infrastructure and,therefore, it is difficult to monitorboth policy and expenditure. UPA-Igave space for focussed civil societyintervention.”

Interview with Aruna Roy, Magsaysay Award winner and social and political

activist. B Y A J O Y A S H I R W A D M A H A P R A S H A S T A

ARUNA ROY: "THE government is notcreating platforms for consultationswith movements."

C.V

.SU

BR

AHM

ANYA

M

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


er Price Index] should be a politicalagenda both in the context of theNREGS and others schemes.

Early this year, you and Jean Drezebacked out of the Central EmploymentGuarantee Council (CEGC) sammelanciting lack of political will inaddressing the actual issues relatingto the implementation of theemployment guarantee scheme. Doyou feel social schemes such as theNREGS and the National Rural HealthMission (NRHM) are not working theway they were planned?

Neither Jean Drèze nor I left theCEGC. We continue to be members.

I had questions at that time, aboutthe functioning of the council, includ-ing the issues raised and about its seri-ousness in addressing policy issues, forwhich it has been constituted. The na-ture of discussions and the time allo-cated for them were areas of specialconcern. The Ministry has failed in itsresponsibility to allow and facilitatethe CEGC to perform its statutorymandate under the Act. For instance,so far even the CEGC’s executive com-mittee has not been constituted.

UPA-II came to power on the strengthof the RTI Act and the employmentguarantee schemes of its previousterm. What are the dilutions proposedin the RTI Act? What do you think arethe political reasons for this?

The RTI Act has been under attacksince 2006. At that time support fromcivil society groups, the Congress’ alli-ance partners and some top leaders ofthe Congress prevented its amend-ment. Since then there have been re-peated efforts to cripple the Act. TheDoPT [Department of Personnel andTraining] seems to have persisted inpushing the same agenda forward indifferent forms.

The resistance to transparency andaccountability comes from the colonialmindset of the top echelons of the bu-reaucracy and now the judiciary,which have pressured the system toprotect secrecy and fight the logic ofaccountability. The political executiveseems to be supporting the RTI by de-

fault. The most conservative parts ofthe state seem to find this new cultureof transparency least acceptable.

Following are specific issues relat-ing to the proposed amendments:

Introducing an exemption for so-called “vexatious and frivolous”applications.

We strongly believe that it is im-possible to come up with definitions of‘vexatious’ and ‘frivolous’ that are notcompletely subjective and conse-quently prone to rampant misuse byofficials. We also feel that it is a hollowpromise to have legislation for ensur-ing ‘transparency’ and encouraging‘accountability’ in governance that ex-cludes the basis on which a decision istaken. Would it be fair to judge a deci-sion (or the decision-maker) withoutknowing why such a decision was tak-en, what facts and arguments were ad-vanced in its favour, and what against?Can one hold a government (or an offi-cial) accountable, just on the basis ofwhat they did (or did not do) withoutknowing the real reasons for their ac-tion or inaction? We, the people ofIndia, already directly or indirectlyknow the decisions of the government,for we are the ones who bear the conse-quences. What the RTI Act facilitatedwas a right to know why those deci-sions were taken, by whom, and basedon what advice. This right is the bed-rock of democracy and the right toinformation, and it cannot be separat-ed or extinguished without denyingthis fundamental right.

Excluding from the purview of theRTI Act access to “file notings” and thedecision-making process, this time byexcluding “discussion/consultationsthat take place before arriving at adecision”.

Neither of the [two nationwide]studies [on the implementation of theRTI], despite interviewing thousandsof PIOs [public information officers]and officials, has concluded that theoccurrence of frivolous or vexatiousapplications is frequent enough topose a threat either to the governmentor to the RTI regime in general. Cer-tainly no evidence has been forthcom-ing in either of these studies that

access to file notings or other elementsof the deliberative process has posed amajor problem for the nation. On thecontrary, many of the officers inter-viewed have candidly stated that theopening up of the deliberative processhas strengthened the hands of the hon-est and sincere official.

Do you see a lack of political will inaddressing the problems concerningthe implementation of the MGNREGAand the NRHM? Why?

UPA-I passed progressive andpath-breaking legislation for the poorand the marginalised. But UPA-II hasfailed to focus and cope with the mam-moth demands these progressive piec-es of legislation have made on theexecutive. The reason primarily lies innot evolving systems for accountabilityand monitoring. The passive responseto issues of massive corruption un-earthed through the NREGS, even in awell-performing State like Rajasthan,is a failure of governments to intro-duce systems and take cognisance ofproven examples of corruption. Thegovernments (Andhra Pradesh notwithstanding) display their lack of in-tent in not addressing these issues.

You are a strong advocate of foodsecurity. What are the problemsassociated with the proposed FoodSecurity Bill? UPA-II’s CommunalViolence Bill and Right to EducationBill have also been criticised as nothaving enough teeth.

The fact is that the government isnot creating platforms for consulta-tions and dialogue with campaigns ona sustained basis to reflect on theseimportant and complex policy initia-tives. The history of the last decade hasbrought in the possibility of a moreparticipatory system of making policy.It is to be noted that the RTI at onelevel and the NREGS at another havewidened the possibility of people’s par-ticipation in evolving policy.

The vision documents that are nowbeing drafted are supposed to spell outthe objectives of achievement for eachMinistry. But the government is wellinto its second year and by the time the

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


agenda is debated and concretised itwill be almost the end of its term.

The political will of UPA-I seemslacking in UPA-II.

The accountability infrastructure,which will include provisions for inde-pendent ombudsman, penalty, griev-ance redress and anti-corruption,which is important to meaningfully re-alise the rights guaranteed under thesecond-generation legislation, hasbeen absent completely. It is apparentthat this is an act of commission ratherthan omission. I am afraid that rightswithout remedies will only providerhetorical value to the important claimto have addressed these basic issues.

Industrialisation is becoming one ofthe priorities of UPA-II. The past sixmonths have witnessed increaseddisplacement and protest movements,as in the case of Vedanta inChhattishgarh [see story on page 37]and Posco in Orissa [see story onpage 34].

The schizophrenic nature of In-

dia’s development agenda has been ob-vious for all to see. On the one hand, weare addressing the concerns of the 60per cent through the RTI, the NREGS,the Forest Act, the Right to Education,etc. Whereas, on the other side, there isthe relentless pushing of the otheragenda of development, displacement,violence, silencing all voices of demo-cratic questioning, rationality, push-ing democratic rights out of theagenda and using state violence.

The government cannot exist inthis dilemma forever. Unless the statere-establishes its basic commitment tothe due process of law, respects demo-cratic rights and affirms its account-ability to its people, the questionsemanating from the state’s relation-ship with the protesting people (as inthe case of Posco) and with politicaldissent will jeopardise its relationshipwith the poor and marginalised peopleand civil society groups. The govern-ment cannot abrogate its own commit-ment to constitutional responsibility.

For many of us, the NREGS and

other entitlements empower the peo-ple to take stands and to make demo-cratic institutions work for themselvesand for the larger good. They are notone-off schemes, but play a very im-portant role in strengthening and dee-pening democracy. It will be incorrectto say that the government is not ad-dressing basic issues such as employ-ment and education. They are,however, tardy in implementation andhave no political strength to pushthem.

The RTI Act was slated to become thebiggest watchdog of Indiandemocracy. With criticism againstUPA-II growing, what role can the Actplay in checking the government at ahigher level? Do you propose a jointaction or movement at this juncture?

The RTI has impacted a hugerange of vital decision-making andpolicy – BT Brinjal, the attempt toamend the RTI Act, implementationof programmes such as the MGNRE-GA, health, public distribution andscores of others. It is probably the mostowned and used Act in recent years.Even those of us who trace its trajecto-ry cannot appreciate the entire canvas.From villages of rural Rajasthan toNew Delhi, the RTI Act is recognisedas a tool of democratic empowerment.

This is not to lessen the variousproblems with implementation. Firstamong these is the very sluggish im-plementation of Section 4 of the RTIAct (proactive disclosure of informa-tion by the Ministries and depart-ments), the problems relating to thecommissions, the lack of training ofPIOs and the staff implementing theAct, and the persistent effort to amendit, among other things.

The reaction of the judiciary to theRTI Act is typical of a colonial andclosed system of governance. Whilethere is no quarrel with safeguardingspace for the independent functioningof the judiciary in the realm of judicialdecision-making in the courts, in rela-tion to administrative matters – suchas appointments, assets declarationand corruption – the judiciary is on apar with other agencies. �

FLOOD CONTROL AND rural connectivity work is on under the NREGS atNuruddinpur village in Khusrupur block of Patna district.

RAN

JEET

KU

MAR

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


ON the internal security front, the first year of theUnited Progressive Alliance government’s secondterm at the Centre has ended on a particularly un-fortunate note, with a succession of Maoist attackson security forces personnel creating an envelopingsense of failure. Since the term began on an aggres-sive and boastful posturing on the subject by theUnion Home Ministry, these reverses must seemdevastating to its authorities. It must be conceded atthe very outset that the Ministry’s strategies andinitiatives against the Maoists have been an unmiti-gated disaster, not only in their implementation andoutcomes, but in their very conception.

The Home Ministry, however, is not the Ministryfor anti-Maoist operations (though it has, for sometime now given such an impression through an un-relenting stream of statements and projections).While an assessment of its performance on theMaoist front must be integral to any assessment ofUPA-II’s performance, there is much more to in-ternal security, and recognition is due to the fact thatthe present Home Ministry has done far more in asingle year than any preceding government in recentmemory. Home Minister P. Chidambaram haspushed and dragged an unwilling and often obstruc-tive bureaucracy to clear a veritable barrage of deci-sions that had been kept in abeyance for years andhas launched a succession of new initiatives – thoughnot all of these withstand critical scrutiny. For effortand intent, the Chidambaram Ministry cannot befaulted.

There is, moreover, significant relief to be foundin the broad trajectory of the principal threats andchallenges to security. Between May 2009 and April2010, total fatalities in terrorism- and insurgency-related violence fell to 2,142, (720 civilians, 457 secu-rity force personnel and 965 militants) comparedwith 2,570 (953 civilians, 421 security force person-nel and 1,196 militants) in the preceding 12 months(all data obtained from the South Asia TerrorismPortal). The decline has been particularly sharp inJammu and Kashmir and in the northeastern region,with fatalities dropping from 506 to 380, and from1,047 to 691, respectively. Even troubled Manipur(see story on page 114), which has seen a steady risein fatalities, from 190 in 2002 to 485 in 2008 and496 in 2009, saw the figure drop to 318 in the firstyear of UPA-II.

An avoidable fracas was, of course, created by theCentre’s permission to the general secretary of theNational Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah(NSCN-IM), Thuingaleng Muivah, to visit his ances-tral village, Somdal, in Ukhrul district in Manipur,enormously exacerbating tensions between the Na-gas and the Meities in Manipur and drawing strongopposition from the Manipur government as well.Muivah’s visit was perceived as intending to consoli-date Manipuri Naga support for the proposed “Grea-ter Nagalim”. Muivah backed off, although only afterthe Prime Minister’s Office requested him to deferhis visit until things “settled down”. Imphal virtuallywent up in flames in June 2001, when the Centre,once again without consulting the affected States,announced the extension of its ceasefire with theNSCN-IM “without territorial limits”.

Given this history, granting Muivah permissionto visit Somdal without taking the State governmentinto its confidence was certainly a faux pas – thoughin the present case the price paid was not excessive.The risk taken, however, was unacceptable, sincecounter-insurgency gains are tentative and remainreversible, there was little evidence of functional civilgovernance in the State, and there was a violentlypolarised political environment.

With a population of just 2.4 million, Manipuraccounts for the largest number of fatalities for any

Strategic blunders

There have been other problemsalong the country’s micro-fissures,including communal riots inHyderabad and significant misstepson the Telangana issue that haveresulted in enormous and avoidablepolitical destabilisation.

For effort and intent, the Home Ministry cannot be faulted, but UPA-II’s core

failure remains in its handling of the Maoist rebellion. B Y A J A I S A H N I

Cover Story

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


State in the country despite a declinein violence.

Assam, the other major theatre ofviolence in the northeastern region,despite an early spurt of incidents andfatalities in 2009, has seen a decline infatalities from 391 to 340 under UPA-II. More significantly, virtually the en-tire executive committee of the UnitedLiberation Front of Asom (ULFA) isnow in custody, barring the group’s‘commander-in-chief’, Paresh Baruah.Much of this has been the consequenceof a dramatic volte-face by Bangladesh,which had long supported insurgentsand terrorists operating against India.It has now arrested most of the leadersof these groupings and handed themover to the Indian authorities.

Another virulent terrorist forma-tion operating in Assam, the BlackWidow, was forced to surrender enmasse after the capture of its ‘com-mander-in-chief’, Jewel Garlosa. Theyear has also witnessed the mass sur-render of the cadre of the United Peo-ple’s Democratic Solidarity. WhileAssam’s troubles are far from over,most insurgent formations in the Statehave suffered dramatic reverses.

In Jammu and Kashmir, trends indeclining violence since the peak offatalities in 2001 have continued un-der UPA-II. Total fatalities underUPA-II declined to 380, from 506 inthe preceding 12 months. This, ofcourse, is the consequence of externalfactors, particularly the gravity of Pa-kistan’s own increasing internal secu-rity challenges, as well as a shift inPakistan’s immediate priorities to itsproxy war in Afghanistan. There is lit-tle evidence of a coherent UPA strate-gy on Pakistan, the source and sponsorof Islamist terrorism in India, otherthan the constant vacillation betweentalks and no-talks.

However, since the Mumbai 26/11attacks there has been just one majorIslamist terrorist attack outside Jam-mu and Kashmir. On February 13,2010, 17 civilians were killed in Pune.This, once again, is substantially theconsequence of the pressures on Pakis-tan, though there has been a contin-uous succession of alerts, arrests and

exposures of terrorist networks andconspiracies in India suggesting thatefforts to engineer new mischief havenot weakened. Crucially, India’s vul-nerability remains high, and Chidam-baram has repeatedly conceded thatdespite the many initiatives to improvesecurity, the country remains as ex-posed to attacks as it was on 26/11.

Crucially, there has been a tremen-dous sense of urgency within UPA-IIto address the existing threats to in-ternal security and the endemic def-icits in capacities that undermine thecountry’s response capabilities. Suc-cessive governments have, over morethan half a century, done grievousharm to the country’s internal securityapparatus, and the enormity of the cu-mulative deficits, the institutional de-cay and the disarray that afflicts everylimb and organ of the system are stag-gering. Take, for instance, the crisis ofleadership in the Indian Police Service(IPS). Between 1998 and 2001,recruitment was arbitrarily reduced tojust 36 a year, down from 88 in 1997.The UPA government has initiated anextraordinary effort to address the cu-

mulative deficits that have resulted,raising the intake to 130 a year in 2008and 2009 and projecting an annualintake of 150 from 2010. Nevertheless,according to the government’s ownprojections, even on this acceleratedschedule, existing deficits will only bemet by 2017, by which time require-ments can be expected to have risen,perhaps, exponentially.

UPA-I, in the months after 26/11,cleared a tremendous backlog of sanc-tions and projects that had beenblocked for years by a recalcitrant bu-reaucracy and indifferent politicalleadership, and this process has con-tinued in its second tenure. Among themost significant of these initiatives isthe effort to strengthen the central in-telligence mechanism by operationa-lising the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC)and Subsidiary Multi-Agency Centres(SMAC) under the Intelligence Bu-reau (I.B.) in at least 30 locationsacross the country. Simultaneously,the I.B. has been granted sanction torecruit 6,000 personnel against the ex-isting vacancies and newly sanctionedposts. Financial and technical re-

UNION HOME MINISTER P. Chidambaram during a visit to Lalgarh, theMaoist hotbed in Paschim Medhinipur district of West Bengal, on April 4.

ARU

NAN

GSU

RO

Y C

HO

WD

HU

RY

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


sources have been increased to theStates for strengthening the SpecialBranches of the police.

There has also been some augmen-tation of capacities of the Coast Guardand the coastal police stations andposts following the glaring lacuna ex-posed by the Mumbai attacks. Thestrength of the Central paramilitaryforces has been increased with thesanction of 75,000 personnel, includ-ing 38 additional battalions in theCentral Reserve Police Force (CRPF),the key counter-terrorism and coun-ter-insurgency responder.

The National Intelligence Gridproject has been initiated, although itsimplementation is still in the rudimen-tary stages. Substantial allocationshave been made for the Crime andCriminal Tracking Network and Sys-tem, but the project is hobbled by tech-nical difficulties and conflicts. TheUnique Identification Project, whichis expected to have a tremendous im-pact on almost every aspect of internalsecurity capabilities, is another initia-tive that has been fast-tracked. TheCentre continues to underwrite policemodernisation and security related ex-penditures in the States, although totalallocations for these have remainedstagnant and utilisation has been wellbelow optimal. While the States are toblame for the poor offtake of availablefunds, the Centre’s Kafkaesque proce-dures of financial approval are at leastpartially to blame.

The actual implementation ofmost of the Centre’s initiatives tends todrag along within a bureaucratic re-sponse paradigm. Of the 38 battalionssanctioned for the CRPF, for instance,no more than two were scheduled to beraised in 2009-10. There are, more-over, a number of poorly conceptual-ised projects that will cost a great dealbut that would have only limited im-pact on overall security.

These certainly include the Na-tional Investigation Agency (NIA),which, with a budget of Rs.16.33 crorefor 2010-11, was intended to be like theUnited States’ Federal Bureau of In-vestigation, with a budget of $7.86 bil-lion. The NIA, moreover, has

cannibalised its leadership resourcesfrom other functional police organisa-tions, each of which was hobbled bymanpower and leadership deficits.The impact of the establishment offour National Security Guard (NSG)hubs in metropolitan centres, similar-ly, will be more symbolic thanoperational.

There have been other problemsalong the country’s micro-fissures, in-cluding communal riots in Hyderabadand significant missteps on the Telan-gana issue, which have resulted inenormous and avoidable political des-tabilisation. Temperatures have beenrising on the Gorkhaland issue forsome time now, and the murder of theAkhil Bhartiya Gorkha League presi-dent, Madan Tamang, can only worsenconditions.

D A N T E W A D A M A S S A C R EUPA-II’s core failure, however, re-mains in its handling of the Maoistrebellion. The Maoist rampage haspushed fatalities through May 2009-April 2010 to 1,045, including 350 se-curity forces personnel and 416 civil-ians, as against 643 (including 254security forces personnel and 208 ci-vilians) in the preceding 12 months.Crucially, this sharp escalation hasbeen the direct consequence of strate-gic blunders and boastful incoherenceon the part of the Centre. Worse still,after the massacre of 75 CRPF person-nel and one State policeman at Chin-talnad in Dantewada on April 6, 2010,in what can only be seen as a disgrace-ful act of finding a scapegoat to coverup the Centre’s failures and to protectthose responsible for the deploymentof the force, the Home Ministry hasgone far beyond anything justifiableon the basis of the report submitted byE.N. Rammohan to humiliate threeexceptional officers with records ofvoluntarily accepting some of the mostdangerous assignments in the country.

While the Chhattisgarh govern-ment has refused to succumb to pres-sure from North Block to transferInspector-General of Police T.G.Longkumer and Dantewada Superin-tendent of Police Amresh Mishra,

Deputy Inspector-General of theCRPF, Nalin Prabhat, has been sum-marily repatriated to his cadre, And-hra Pradesh – an undeserved disgracefollowing a malicious campaign ofleaks from the Ministry.

The fate of the Centre’s incompe-tent, under-resourced and miscon-ceived massive and coordinatedoperations against the Maoists has, ofcourse, now been sealed. Unfortunate-ly, with the Ministry’s indefensible ac-tion against the police leadership inDantewada, it is unlikely that policeofficers are going to engage with par-ticular enthusiasm in any future, evenif better conceptualised and planned,initiatives against the Maoists. Therehas been a critical breach of faith here,and it will certainly be an uphill task torestore confidence in the presentHome Ministry.

The Ministry has made a majorstrategic error in positioning itself atthe core of internal security and coun-ter-insurgency and counter-terrorismresponses. In doing so, it has provideduncooperative States – where the realresponsibility actually lies – with analibi to do little or nothing, and, at thesame time, set the Ministry up for afall. A major Islamist terrorist orMaoist attack was inevitable, and, withthe Ministry’s ill-advised braggingover the past year, political opportun-ists and a sensational media werehardly going to ignore an opportunityto take down a high-profile Minister.

Despite crucial errors of strategyand projection, there has been somestabilisation in various theatres of pro-tracted violence under UPA-II. Sever-al projects and programmes initiatedin this phase will bear fruit in the yearsto come. Nevertheless, the crisis of ca-pacities that afflicts the intelligence,enforcement and administrative appa-ratus remains substantially unad-dressed. Instead of complaining aboutlimited mandates, UPA-II needs to fo-cus on urgent efforts to build, consoli-date and reorient the state’s capacitiesfor internal security management. �

Ajai Sahni is Executive Director,Institute for Conflict Management &South Asia Terrorism Portal.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


THREE defining events impacting on regionaland international politics straddled the week inwhich the United Progressive Alliance-II govern-ment completed its first year in office: the Iran-Turkey-Brazil swap deal over the handling of Teh-eran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel, the new strategy ofthe North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO),and the United States-China strategic dialogue.These may appear disconnected events, but theyonce again underscore the transformational natureof the contemporary world situation. The efficacy orsuccess of the foreign policy trajectory and diploma-cy of a major country such as India needs to bemeasured ideally in terms of its ability to influenceand mould the world order and, at the very least, byits capacity to adapt to the new demands of thetransforming external environment.

The Iran-Turkey-Brazil swap deal not only chal-lenges the United States’ diplomatic campaign torally support for a unanimous United Nations Secu-rity Council resolution imposing sanctions againstthe Persian Gulf country, but also strengthens thedemand for a democratised world order in whichunbridled political power of a clutch of states can nolonger be used to ride roughshod over national sov-ereignty and international law. Ideally speaking, thisought to have been a quadripartite deal, with Indiaforming the fourth leg. Yet it is not, and that raisesprofound questions about the creative thinking thathas gone into Indian foreign policymaking in thepost-Cold War era on a range of ideological issues –the continued relevance of non-alignment, the soli-darity of developing countries, the democratisation

of the U.N. system, international law and nationalsovereignty, and so on.

The abysmal truth is that very little conceptualthinking has been taking place within the Indianforeign policy establishment in the recent years al-though the wherewithal is not lacking and the coun-try indeed owns a full-fledged National SecurityCouncil Secretariat and National Security AdvisoryBoard and several “think tanks” to boot. Even small-er countries such as Iran and Turkey attribute greatimportance to policy planning. Turkey’s or Iran’sForeign Secretary traditionally refuses to hold directcharge of any portfolio in his Ministry, which enableshim to focus primarily on policy planning with amind uncluttered by the hurly-burly of fire-fightingthat forms the stuff of day-to-day diplomacy in theworld chancelleries.

Quite obviously, the recent bonding of Turkeyand Brazil with Iran signified a strategic defiance ofWashington’s policy to isolate Teheran. Yet Turkey’sand Brazil’s relations with the U.S. are no less crucialfor their foreign policy than U.S-India ties are forNew Delhi. Besides, Turkey’s chances of getting intothe European Union are in the crosshairs. Brazil, likeIndia, is bidding for a permanent seat in the U.N.Security Council. Nonetheless, their legs did not gowobbly or spirit weaken while taking a lead role tothwart the U.S. effort to isolate Iran, simply becausehigh principles affecting the emerging world orderare involved. Turkey and Brazil consciously raisedtheir profile as regional powers.

While showing the spunk to undermine a U.S.-inspired resolution against Iran at the risk of annoy-ing Washington, they in fact acted in their self-interest, too. This is non-confrontational diplomacyat its best advancing the search for a new config-uration in the world order that challenges big powerhegemony. New Delhi is still on a learning curveabout the enormous positive potential of the kind ofpost-Cold War “non-aligned” diplomacy that Turkeyand Brazil are offering as regional powers. Turkeyand Brazil have assaulted the archaic practice of theP-5 working as a cabal without bringing the non-permanent members into discussions. No doubt,these are issues affecting India’s medium- and long-

The Iran issue becomes a litmus test.Manmohan Singh is the only IndianPrime Minister in recent decades notto have visited Teheran although hehas been in and out of the PersianGulf more than once.

Very little conceptual thinking has been taking place within the Indian foreign

policy establishment in recent years. B Y M . K . B H A D R A K U M A R

Cover Story

Unipolar dilemmas

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


term interests, and the country oughtto have clarity of thinking. India choseto ignore the stunning reality that theU.S.’ (and the P-5’s) approach towardIran is less about nuclear weaponsthan about power politics. By doing so,India conveniently abdicated its re-sponsibilities as a serious regionalpower and a stakeholder in the securi-ty and stability of its extendedneighbourhood.

N E W S T R A T E G Y F O R N A T OWhy is it that India, an ace player onthe diplomatic arena historically, findsitself lost in thoughts, lurking in theshadows? This brings us to the door-steps of a second major landmark de-velopment in recent times, namely, theunfurling of the new strategy for NA-TO. In the months leading to NATO’ssummit meeting in November in Lis-bon, the new draft strategy will be de-bated in the world capitals as it would

have a huge bearing on regional andinternational security well into the21st century, and all countries big andsmall will be affected by it. NATO ispoised to transform as a global securityorganisation, and besides being a mil-itary behemoth, it will have a politicalagenda couched in idioms of a demo-cratic community with shared idealsand purposes.

The alliance’s new frameworkcould vitally affect Indian interests –NATO as a guarantor of energy trans-portation routes, the continued pivotalimportance attached to trans-Atlanti-cism in the U.S.’ global strategies, NA-TO’s relations with Russia and Chinaand its focus on missile defence ex-tending to include medium-range mis-siles, NATO’s operations and missionsas the world’s policeman, and so on.Least of all, fresh impetus arises tomodernise the Indian armed forcesand weapons even as NATO takes hab-

itation in the South Asian “commons”and is slouching towards West Asiaand Central Asia.

More fundamentally, a naggingquestion arises: Is this the world oftomorrow that the UPA-I led by PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh anticipat-ed? Unfortunately, neither UPA-I norUPA-II cared to share with the publicthe seminal report prepared by theTask Force appointed by ManmohanSingh in late 2005 to conceptualise a“global vision” for chartering India’spassage into the 21st century. He hasconsistently argued for transparencyin governance, but this personal phi-losophy has not translated into prac-tice in the domain of foreignpolicymaking. Transparency wouldhave contributed to informed dis-courses on vital issues of foreign policy(including the highly controversial civ-il nuclear agreement between Indiaand the U.S. which almost brought

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT LUIS Inacio Lula da Silva, his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and TurkishPrime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, before signing an agreement to ship most of Iran’s enriched uranium toTurkey in a nuclear fuel swap deal, in Teheran on May 17. This ought to have been a quadripartite deal with Indiaforming the fourth leg had Indian policymakers done some creative thinking.

VAH

ID S

ALEM

I/AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Cover Story

UPA-I down to its knees and alteredthe course of the country’s coalitionpolitics).

The heart of the matter is that foran emerging power like India in a tran-sitional phase of its development, agood foreign policy should be an exten-sion of its national policies, and in-formed debates andconsensus-building among the pleth-ora of interest groups that have ap-peared during the past decade or twoin the country become a prerequisite ofthe situation. A Free Trade Agreement(FTA) with the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) or theEuropean Union (E.U.) directly im-pacts the lives of tens of millions ofIndians, and yet the governmentshows scant regard for public account-ability while negotiating internationalagreements. Parliament still lacks amechanism to hold public hearingsand it has no real role – except as “talk-ing shop” – in overseeing internationalagreements. Most vibrant democra-cies possess such mechanisms – be itIran, the U.S. or Russia.

Thus, the assumptions behind thenuclear deal with the U.S. and thestated objectives of the deal still re-main debatable. UPA-II is still to givea convincing account to Parliamentwhy Manmohan Singh could not fulfilhis solemn assurances regarding In-dia’s expectations out of the nucleardeal. And the government is insteadpressing ahead with the nuclear liabil-ity Bill. Paradoxically, we see Pakistanon a parallel diplomatic track, not-withstanding its deplorable track re-cord on nuclear proliferation, cruisingcomfortably towards almost the samedestination of a waiver from the Nucle-ar Suppliers Group without the U.S.insisting on conditionalities such as aHyde Act or downstream nationallegislation.

UPA-I’s foreign policy matrix wasriddled with contradictions and UPA-II is still to address them squarely. Thenaive assumption that the U.S. viewedIndia as the pre-eminent power in theIndian Ocean region or as an “Asianbalancer”; the arrogant dispositionthat India could do away with diversi-

fied or multi-vector foreign policy solong as it single-mindedly built up the“strategic partnership” with the U.S;the patronising attitude towards thenon-aligned bloc – these have beenproven wrong. Admittedly, there havelately been signs of reviving the strate-gic ties with Russia and repairing thedamage caused to the friendly ties withIran, and a new thinking may be ap-pearing with regard to Afghanistan.Yet UPA-II continues to show symp-toms of a “unipolar predicament” everynow and then. Which is why the Iranissue becomes a litmus test, and thefact that Manmohan Singh remainsthe only Indian Prime Minister in re-cent decades not to have visited Teh-eran – although he has been in and outof the Persian Gulf more than once –sticks out.

In this wasteland, India needs toplough new furrows. And the U.S.-China strategic dialogue in Beijing onMay 25-26 provides a few useful sign-posts. One, U.S.-China ties have reac-hed a high level of interdependenceand there is no more scope for eitherside to confront the other. In short, theU.S. does not envisage an “Asian bal-ancer” to China. Two, the U.S. is solic-iting China to play an effective globalrole. In other words, Washington isactually encouraging Beijing to be “as-sertive” (to use Manmohan Singh’swords) and to work “shoulder to shoul-der” with it on the basis of shared con-cerns and common interests. Three,the U.S., which has succeeded in get-ting embedded in our region, is nowshifting gear and seeking institutional-ised cooperation with China on issuesaffecting the security and stability ofSouth Asia. In sum, the U.S. neverquite viewed the Indian Ocean or theSouth Asian region as India’s strategicbackyard. Four, China expects the U.S.to show one hundred per cent respectto its sensitivities on the issues of Tai-wan and Tibet if a full-fledged globalpartnership is to ensue. That is to say,there is no more any “Tibet card” or“Taiwan card” left to play.

No doubt, these templates are ofgreat import to the geopolitics of theregion and to Indian policies. They un-

derline the imperative need for Indiato adjust to a new regional paradigmeven as U.S. President Barack Oba-ma’s foreign policy agenda riveted onthe use of “smart power” and “engage-ment” gathers momentum. To be sure,the U.S. remains a high priority in In-dia’s foreign policy. But the U.S.-Indiaengagement is fast transforming, andit is happening at Washington’s in-stance rather than at New Delhi’sthoughtful initiative. The probabilityis that the U.S-India partnership is setto deepen and broaden. But Indianeeds to factor in that military cooper-ation is only one vector of the part-nership and may not necessarily be themost important one for the pursuit ofIndia’s national policies ofdevelopment.

UPA-II on its part has done little toclear the opposition’s sense of politicalbetrayal generated by the covert man-ner in which Manmohan Singh’s pre-vious government rammed the nucleardeal down the throat of the nation andits recourse to crude methods to ma-nipulate a parliamentary majority.Never before in independent India’shistory has a major foreign policymove been advanced with such futiletriumphalism.

Meanwhile, the quintessentiallyuppity UPA mindset refuses to dis-sipate – that it knows best, that it willtenaciously press ahead with its petagenda no matter the dissent. Thus,the catastrophic breakdown of high-level India-Iran understanding con-tinues. Again, UPA-II sprang a sur-prise on the public opinion atSharm-el-Sheikh and an importantinitiative faltered. On the whole, thegovernment succeeded in keeping ten-sions with Pakistan under check. Butthe lack of a coherent neighbourhoodpolicy, the continued inability to makePakistan a stakeholder in cooperationand the slow pace of normalisationwith China weaken India’s options at aformative period in regional politicswhen the U.S-China grid is appearingon the horizons and NATO seeks anesting place in the region. �M.K. Bhadrakumar is a formerdiplomat

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


SABRINA NASRIN HUQ, 23, a Bangladeshinational pursuing her medical internship at Kastur-ba Hospital in the coastal town of Manipal in Karna-taka, is among the eight lucky passengers whosurvived the disaster that struck Air India ExpressFlight IX 812 at the Bajpe airport in Mangalore onMay 22. The early-morning, low-cost Dubai-Manga-lore flight, which overshot the runway before plung-

ing into a ravine and catching fire, was carrying 160passengers and six crew members.

Sabrina had delayed her departure from Dubaiby two days because her friends were not available todrop her off at the Dubai International Airport. Itwas not her first trip on this route. She had taken theflight of three hours and 45 minutes several timesbefore.

Sabrina recalls that when the captain asked thepassengers to fasten their seat belts she realised theywere about to touch down. It was going to be 6 a.m.(local time).

The Boeing 737-800’s tyres gently touched thetarmac and the aircraft appeared to be slowingdown. But suddenly there was acceleration and theplane picked up speed. “The plane began shudderingand we knew something was wrong and startedscreaming. We were thrown back in our seats, andthe next second we were hurtling downwards. Iheard a noise, then the plane started to come to a haltand in a few seconds the lights went out. There wasdead silence. It all happened so fast.”

This was when Sabrina says she struggled to stayconscious. “I thought I was in a car. I struggled tounfasten my seat belt and then tried to get up. But myright foot was stuck. I managed to pull it out, andthen, I don’t remember how, but I was either pushedout or fell out of one of the many openings that hadsprung up in the plane. There were trees all around. Ithought I was dreaming; I was aching all over. Sud-denly, realising that the plane could catch fire, Istarted walking away quickly. After some time Icould not walk anymore. I held on to a tree trunk andscreamed for help. Then I saw that the plane hadcaught fire and I heard screams from within.”

Sabrina remembers that she was then carried toan ambulance. After that, she says, she found herselfin a hospital with a broken left leg, a sprained rightankle, and lacerations on her head, hands and thigh.

The seven other survivors of the national carrier’sworst aviation disaster in over a decade had alsomanaged to jump out of the plane, which had splitinto more than two pieces before bursting intoflames after coming to a halt on its belly. So severeand sudden was the intensity of the fire that many of

Tragic touchdown

Most of the passengers wereresidents of either Mangalore orother towns in the coastal districts of Karnataka. Around 40 of thosekilled were from Kerala’s northerndistricts of Kasargod, Kannur andMalappuram.

Air India Express Flight IX 812 crashes at Mangalore airport, killing 158 persons

on board. B Y R A V I S H A R M A IN MANGALORE

Disaster

A GOOGLE EARTH image of the runway at Bajpe airport.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


THE AIR INDIAExpress plane fromDubai which burstinto flames afterovershooting therunway at Mangaloreairport on May 22.

REU

TER

S

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


those killed were found with their seatbelts still fastened. Most of the pas-sengers had been burnt to death intheir seats, with as many as 22 bodiescharred beyond recognition so thatDNA tests had to be performed by ateam summoned from the Centre forDNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics,Hyderabad.

Sabrina fervently thanks the Al-mighty for sparing her life. She alsoattributes her escape to a seat changefrom 7B to 7A. “There was no one in 7Aso I moved to the window seat. Therewas a lady in 7C. She did not survivethe crash. And neither did the three-member family that sat in the seats infront of me. I saw a pic-ture of the family in thepapers the nextmorning.”

Mangalore residentJoel Pratap D’Souza,who survived the crash,had gone to Dubai to seehis sister Jane Priya andalso find a job. The 24-year-old made the tripback only to change hisvisa status as DucabCompany in Dubai hadoffered him a job as anassistant machinist.Joel, who was in the middle section ofthe aircraft (seat 23A), says he saw awide opening in the airframe andmanaged to tumble out through it.Two other persons followed him, hesays from his hospital bed where he isbeing treated for a suspected spinalinjury.

Puttur Ismail Abdulla, a 36-year-old sports shop salesman in Dubai,and Ummer Farook Mohammed, a ro-bust 26-year-old who had just landed ajob in Dubai, also talk of hearing anoise, which they claim could havebeen that of a tyre burst, and then theaircraft hitting something before ca-reening down and coming to a stop.They say they saw smoke emanatingfrom the front sections of the aircraftand a fire starting. Farook, who singedhis hands, chest and face, was sitting inthe middle section of the plane. Hemanaged to walk, and then crawl away

from the crash site and finally scamperup a small cliff and call his sister, whoin turn alerted others who were wait-ing near the arrival lounge unaware ofwhat had happened. “The plane waswobbling badly, and then startedbreaking apart. Through a hole, I sawsome trees. I pushed out a man whowas in front of me. And though I burntmy hands I was also able to get outthrough the hole.”

Mohammed Usman, a 49-year-oldtransport operator with a constructionfirm in Dubai, says that the aircrafthad landed normally. Then he heard aloud, unfamiliar sound. The aircraftthen veered out of control and from his

seat, 19C, he says he sawthe wing on his side dis-appear. Two fellow pas-sengers who were sittingbeside him also saw this.

Usman managed tounbuckle his seat belt butnot before he sufferedsome burn injuries. Hesaid he saw people tryingin vain to unbuckle theirseat belts. “A fire hadstarted and I heard wom-en and childrenscreaming.”

Seven of the survi-vors managed to make their way to theMangalore-Goa railway line, which isaround 300 metres away, from wherethey were taken to hospitals across thecity.

The air crash has left scores of shat-tered lives, wiped out entire families,and turned upside down the destiniesof many a family. The traumatisedfamilies were faced with the bleak ex-ercise of identifying the bodies. Inmany cases there was just a body partthat was left – the dead had to be iden-tified by a talisman, a cross on a chain,rings on the toe or finger, a passporttucked in a pocket, branded shoes, orwhatever little was left on the body.

Said Marita D’Souza, whose sisterSarita Philomena D’Souza and broth-er-in-law Naveen Walter Fernandesperished in the crash: “While Naveen’sface could be somewhat seen, we wereable to only recover my sister’s leg, that

too after recognising her toe rings.”The couple, who worked in a hypermarket in Dubai, were coming down tospend time with their four-year-olddaughter, Viola, whom they had leftbehind in Mangalore. The young girl,who was waiting with petals to receiveher parents, is in a state of shock.

The distressing task of identifyingthose killed was further compoundedby the multiple claims in the cases of at

RESCUEOPERATIONS INfull swing at thecrash site.

PTI

CAPT. ZLATKOGLUSICA, commanderof the ill-fated plane.

PTI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


least three bodies. In the end therewere 36 claimants for 22 bodies, ne-cessitating DNA profiling. PatriciaD’Souza, whose husband, Ignatius,worked as a cook in a canteen in AbuDhabi and was killed in the crash, said:“We recognised the body, only the lefthand was burnt badly, and the post-mortem was also conducted. But thena family from Kasargod also claimedthe body. His brother Denny was

asked to give a DNA sample.” Betweensobs she said Ignatius had telephonedher the night before he left and keptsaying, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

One of the most tragic tales wasthat of Fouzia, a young bride-to-befrom Uppala in Kasargod, Kerala. Herbrothers Mohammed Basheer andAbubequer Siddique were to arrive bythe ill-fated plane to attend her wed-ding. Both perished in the crash.

During identification, it was alsofound that 12 persons were travellingon false passports.

Air India Express, a subsidiary ofthe government-owned NationalAviation Corporation of India Limited(NACIL), the holding company of AirIndia, is also India’s first low-cost in-ternational airline. Carved out of AirIndia’s operations in 2004, it has onlyone class – economy. It operates 24

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


‘Next Generation’ Boeing 737s and ca-ters largely to the Indian workforce inthe Gulf. Flight IX 812 was no excep-tion. It was full of expatriates and wan-nabe expatriates and a sprinkling ofbusinessmen returning to India for aholiday or to visit an ailing relative orattend a wedding or funeral or just toget a work permit visa.

Unsurprisingly, most of the pas-sengers were residents of either Man-galore or other towns in Karnataka’scoastal districts of Udupi, Uttara Kan-nada and Dakshina Kannada. Inter-estingly, around 40 of those killedwere from Kerala’s northern districtsof Kasargod, Kannur and Malappu-ram, many of them the sole bread-winners of their families. Most of themwere flying to attend weddings, thetime of year being the peak of the wed-ding season in the region.

Mangalore is the nearest interna-tional airport for air travellers from theMalabar region. The Kozhikode Inter-national Airport at Karipur is located215 km from Kasargod town, whereasMangalore is just 50 km away. Therelatively cheaper fares of Air IndiaExpress have been a boon to the peopleof the region.

E Y E W I T N E S S A C C O U N T SFrom early eyewitness accounts, thismuch was apparent: Flight 812 afterlanding in clear visibility had overshotBajpe airport’s runway 24. The run-way, which was made operational in2006, is 8,037 feet long and has asanded runway end safety area of 295ft. The available evidence was also in-dicative, though not conclusively, thatthe pilots – Capt. Zlatko Glusica, aBritish national of Serbian ethnicityand a commander with over 10,000hours of flying experience, and seniorfirst officer Capt H.S. Ahluwalia(3,650 hours of flying experience) – forreasons as yet unknown had attempt-ed to take off again after touchingdown, perhaps only to realise thatthere was not enough runway length todo so.

It also appeared (though no piecesof tyre were found on the runway) thatthe aircraft’s nose wheel tyre burst af-

ter touchdown, with the aircraft, bynow out of control, overshooting therunway. When the pilots attempted totake off again, the aircraft swung to theright (possibly because of the right en-gine failing). The right wing hit a radioantenna – a ‘T’-shaped, frangible com-ponent of the airport’s InstrumentLanding System called a LocaliserAntenna.

The aircraft then ploughedthrough a wall of sandbags and a con-crete perimeter fence before plummet-ing down a wooded ravine andtraversed around a hundred metres ofundulating forested land until it reac-hed another drop. The steep but shortcliff proved no hurdle as the aircraftsailed over it, crossing the narrow Ken-jar-Adyapady road and coming to ahalt in the adjoining wooded area. Theaircraft had by now started to disin-tegrate and catch fire, having traversedaround 500 metres since leaving thetarmac.

Eyewitnesses who arrived at thecrash site within minutes of the acci-dent said that the first to arrive on thespot were personnel from the AirportsAuthority of India (AAI). People nearby were alerted to the crash by theheavy white smoke, and some by thenoise.

It took more than two hours for thefire/crash tenders to douse the fire.While initially they tried to douse thefire from atop the cliff, they were laterable to make a passage through thetrees and get closer to the accident site.

The local people did a tremendousjob of retrieving many of the bodies,unmindful of the stench of burningflesh. There was no traffic manage-ment on the only narrow road that ledto the crash site. Ambulances and po-lice vehicles were jostling with two-wheelers for space. A fire-fighting ve-hicle belonging to the AAI toppled as itwas approaching the crash site, givingan indication of just how chaotic therescue efforts were.

As the plane had crashed in awooded area, it took 72 hours to findthe black box. The orange-coloured(for better visibility) black box, whichprimarily consists of two separate

pieces of equipment – the cockpit voicerecorder (CVR) and the digital flightdata recorder (DFDR) – will give in-vestigators definitive clues about whatactually went wrong. While the CVRwill allow investigators to play backconversations and commands in thecockpit right up to the final moments,the DFDR will have the recordings ofover 200 parameters of the aircraft’sactual flight, including airspeed, alti-tude, heading and vertical accelera-tion, engine speed, temperature, andaircraft pitch.

According to officials from the Di-rectorate General of Civil Aviation(DGCA), India’s civil regulatory au-thority, analysis of the DFDR’s datawill be done in the United States at thelaboratories of the National Transpor-tation Safety Board (NTSB).

U . S . A G E N C Y T O H E L P P R O B EWhile a preliminary assessment of theDFDR’s data could take a fortnight,the final, conclusive reasons for thecrash will take a year to be known. TheDGCA investigating team will lean fortechnical support on representativesfrom the NTSB, the Federal AviationAdministration (the DGCA’s Ameri-can counterpart) and the aircraft’smanufacturer, Boeing. Air India is alsoconducting an internal probe.

With the total insurance payout forthe loss of 158 lives and the destructionof the Boeing 737 and cargo expectedto be more than Rs.350 crore, officialssaid it would take years before all theclaims were settled. Besides the com-pensation of Rs.2 lakh each an-nounced from the Prime Minister’sRelief Fund to the next of kin of thosekilled, Air India has announced an in-terim compensation of Rs.10 lakh foreach of the deceased passengers above12 years of age. The interim compensa-tion is in partial fulfilment of the obli-gations under the MontrealConvention (Convention for the Uni-fication of Certain Rules for Interna-tional Carriage). Full compensation,which could run to Rs.75 lakh to eachof those killed, will be made after theairline’s claims are settled by the in-surers. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


WITHIN hours of the May 22 crash of the AirIndia Express Flight IX 812 near Mangalore’s Bajpeairport, Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel con-fidently announced that the pilots of the ill-fatedaircraft had touched down late, well beyond thetouchdown zone (the first 3,000 feet of the runway),realised the error and braked hard but could not stopthe aircraft in the available distance.

The investigations may very well prove him right.But Praful Patel was probably following the old avia-tion dictum: after an air accident, if the pilots are

alive nail them, if they are dead blame them. (Asection of the airline’s pilots have demanded theresignation of the Minister and that of Air India’sChairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav.)

He also discounted theories that the Mangaloreairport, perched atop a hill with a gorge at the end ofits table-top runway, was unsafe. Why did Flight IX812 not slow down if the airport has, as per In-ternational Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)standards, a sanded runway end safety area (RESA)of 90 metres (295 feet) to arrest a speeding aircraft.

Says Capt. A. Ranganathan, an experienced air-line instructor pilot and consultant in the field of airaccident prevention, “The ICAO stipulates a RESAof 120 metres and in airfields such as Mangalore,where the terrain is not conducive to a recovery, itrecommends a RESA of 240 metres. This is just notthere at Mangalore.”

Questions about what made the Boeing 737 air-craft overshoot the runway and plummet down a cliffon a day when visibility was good, the winds werecalm and the weather was fine demand answers.

Some aviation consultants, media talking headsand environmentalists see flaws in the location of theairport and its runway as the primary reason for the

Runway overrun

Some experts agree that a table-toprunway with a small runway endsafety area and, worse, a gorge at theend of it does make it less forgivingshould the pilot end up making aserious misjudgment during atouchdown.

Was there ample room for the Boeing 737 to land at Bajpe airport? Or was the

pilot unprepared for a short, firm landing? B Y R A V I S H A R M A

AN AIR INDIA Express flight touches down at the new runway of the Bajpe airport in Mangalore.

Disaster

crash. They point to the fact that the8,037-foot runway, its stop-way(which is the last 300 ft of a runway,and though not fit to take the weight ofan aircraft during take-offs and land-ings is designed as a soft surface toallow a sinking down of the aircraft’styres) and the RESA – rest on hardly alength of 9,000 ft, after which there isa drop into a gorge. This, they say, givesa pilot very little room for error duringan emergency.

Other experts are of the view that arunway length of 8,000 ft is robustenough not to cause alarm and feelthat there was ample room for a Boe-ing 737 to land comfortably under al-most all conditions. Nevertheless, theyagree that a table-top runway with asmall RESA and, worse, a gorge at theend of it does make it less forgivingshould the pilot end up making a seri-ous misjudgment during a touchdown.

Pilots who have operated fromMangalore airport opine that by nostretch of imagination can it be saidthat the experienced commander ofFlight IX 812, Capt. Zlatko Glusica,who was familiar with the airport,would have been unprepared to pulloff a table-top runway landing. But,was it too late when he tried to takecontrol? Was there a lack of imple-

mentation of standard procedures?Was there a lack of communicationbetween the pilots at a crucial junc-ture? According to aviation experts, anaccident is the end result of a series ofevents, a systemic failure.

One of the foremost points of theinvestigation would be to find out whowas at the controls during the ap-proach and again during the final mo-ments? Was it Capt. Glusica, who wasknown to be confident enough to allowmany of his first officers to undertake alanding, especially in challenging con-ditions, or the first officer, Capt. H.S.Ahluwalia? And equally critically, wasthere a delay in Capt. Glusica assum-ing that he was the PNF (pilot notflying), taking over controls in theevent of an emergency?

A senior Air India flying instructorsaid that there was always the questionof pilot fatigue since it was a QTA(quick turnaround) flight and they“had flown all night and through pre-monsoon weather over the ArabianSea”. This, the pilot explained, couldhave slowed down their reaction time.“Global studies have shown that 14 percent of air accidents take place in theearly morning hours due to fatigue.Also, statistically, the hours between 2a.m. and 6 a.m. are the most dangerousto fly in. And most Air India Expressflights are scheduled at night.”

Initial reports had indicated thatthe pilots of Flight IX 812 had tried toinitiate “a go around” procedure (abortthe landing and take off again), but didthey suddenly realise that there wasnot enough runway length to do so andso attempted a full stop landing?

Aviation experts said that while at-tempting a go around there could havebeen a partial failure of brakes, thrustreversers (which decelerate the en-gine) and/or spoilers (devices on thewings that destroy the air flow/lift onthe wings and, therefore, help transferthe weight of the aircraft on to thewheels, helping it to stop). Any suchfailure would greatly increase thelanding distance required. Even a par-tial failure could lead to asymmetriccontrol problems. With both enginesat full power during a go around, a

failure of one of them could also sendthe aircraft swinging to one side. Fur-ther, did the pilots, after touchingdown, deploy the spoilers (any failurecan extend the landing distance). At-tempting a go around would have re-quired the reversers to be stored bypushing them down and then pullingthe throttle forward.

Aviation expert Patrick Smith,writing on the Mangalore crash in hiscolumn “Ask the Pilot” for the websiteSalon.com, wonders whether the pi-lots found themselves “in a positionwhere, having neglected to break offthe landing when it was still perfectlysafe to do so, suddenly found that therewas neither room enough to accelerateto climb speed nor room enough tostop”.

Other questions include a possiblemiscommunication between the expa-triate and Indian pilots and the possi-bility of the light drizzle resulting inthe runway, already coated with rub-ber deposits from aircraft tyres, experi-encing the highly dangerous situationof “reverted rubber aqua-planing”,wherein aircraft can skid on the thinfilm of slippery rubber and steam.

Also, did the presence of stormclouds in the vicinity cause a severeand sudden change in wind direction

AN AVIATION OFFICIAL holds up anaircraft part claimed to be the “blackbox” recovered from the wreckage.

AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


CIVIL AVIATION MINISTERPraful Patel addressing newsmenin New Delhi.

VIJA

Y VE

RM

A/PT

I

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


and did the wind shear/microburstlead to a sudden tailwind causing theaircraft to float? There have also beenquestions whether the aircraft wasoverloaded. Air India Express pilotssaid that this was often the case in Gulfstations where ground staff often donot show the extra baggage weight tothe pilots. This makes speed calcula-tions go awry.

Again, were the pilots trying tomake a soft touchdown instead of afirm touchdown as recommended inthe books on short/critical runways?Air India pilots claimed that the man-agement had been pressuring pilots tomake softer landings as the companyhad lower landing “G” load tolerancesthan what Boeing recommended. Ex-plained a pilot: “The pilot of the ill-fated aircraft could have floated theaircraft as a result of this, and thentouched down late, well beyond theaiming point.”

According to experts, India hashad a fairly good civil aviation safetyrecord, but poor regulatory implemen-

tation, substandard hiring, inadequatetraining and a general attitude of com-placency could spoil the copybook. In-dia also does not have an independentregulatory body like the NationalTransportation Safety Board – the in-dependent agency in the United Statesresponsible for the investigation oftransportation accidents.

Ironically, while the Commissionof Railway Safety, which deals withmatters pertaining to safety in railtravel and train operations, works un-der the administrative control of theMinistry of Civil Aviation, giving it adegree of independence, investigationinto air accidents is the sole prerog-ative of the Directorate General of CivilAviation (DGCA). Patrick Smithwrites:

“The Mangalore incident high-lights a particular and growingly com-mon kind of accident: the runwayoverrun. A plane is landing or takingoff in what seem to be manageableconditions, yet for one reason or an-other it careens off the runway and

crashes. We’ve seen this several timesin the past few years – in Toronto, SaoPaula, Chicago, Lexington. This can belooked at in a couple of ways, one morepositive than the other. On the brightside, we’re seeing more runway acci-dents because, through vastly im-proved crew training and technology,we’ve all but eliminated most of theother kinds. What’s left over are thosecauses that are the toughest to engi-neer away. There is a certain, inexora-ble precariousness of fate any time ajetliner is hurtling down a runway at160 mph, and this will always be themost inherently dangerous portion ofany flight...

“In retrospect, a majority of theseaccidents turn out to have been easilyavoidable, the fault of human errorcompounded by airport infrastruc-tures (short runways, lack of stop-wayzones, etc.) that maybe aren’t as top-notch as they could be. It could be westill have some work to do when itcomes to that training and technol-ogy.” �

THE MOTHER OF an Air India Express crash victim, during funeral services in Mangalore on May 23.

DIB

YAN

GSH

U S

ARK

AR/A

FP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


IF the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the largerHindutva combine led by the Rashtriya Swayam-sewak Sangh (RSS) were to take stock of Nitin Gad-kari’s performance as party president, the periodbetween the last week of April and the last week ofMay 2010 would by any yardstick be rated as thelowest point of his leadership. For, it was during thisperiod that the relatively young politician from Mah-arashtra belied the hopes that the Sangh Parivar hadreposed in him. Gadkari’s words and deeds in thisperiod exposed not only his political naivete and hislack of strategic or tactical manoeuvring skills in therealm of realpolitik but also the absence of the poiseexpected of a national leader. Clearly this is not thekind of beginning the Sangh Parivar would havewanted for one of its “favourite boys”.

A case in point is the way the BJP leadershiphandled the political impasse in Jharkhand, whichlasted for nearly a month from April 27, the day theCongress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)government defeated the cut motions moved againstit by the BJP and the Left parties led by the Commu-nist Party of India (Marxist). As the results of the cutmotions came out, it became clear that Shibu Soren,the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, who continues tobe a member of the Lok Sabha, had voted in favour ofthe UPA although his own party, the JharkhandMukthi Morcha (JMM), was running a coalitiongovernment with the BJP in the State. The BJPleadership protested and immediately announcedwithdrawal of support to the Soren-led government.

Still, the “party with principles” under the new,“disciplinarian leader” was unable to implement this

decision for as long as 26 days. By the time the BJPpresented the formal letter withdrawing support tothe Governor on May 24, the party had not only lostits credibility but also its political honour. During thefour weeks between April 28 and May 24, the JMMand its leadership dangled several political and pow-er-sharing deals before the BJP, and the latter re-sponded to them positively. However, the JMM wentback on all its promises, leaving the saffron party in astate of embarrassment.

“There is little doubt that Gadkari’s leadership onthe Jharkhand imbroglio has caused great harm tothe BJP and the Sangh Parivar as a whole. He wasbrought in as the top leader of the BJP to reassert theparty’s credentials as a clean party, committed toprobity in political practice. But that promise hasbeen shattered barely six months into Gadkari’s ten-ure. This is indeed a terrible signal for the party and

Faltering first steps

The Jharkhand imbroglio exposesthe flaws in Nitin Gadkari’sleadership. The hope that he wouldreassert the BJP’s credentials as aclean party, committed to probity inpolitical practice, has been shattered.

Much to the chagrin of the Sangh Parivar, the new BJP president proves to be

susceptible to pressures and lacking in tactical skills. B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N

Politics

NITIN GADKARI, BJP president, with ShibuSoren, JMM chief, at the BJP party office, inMumbai, on December 28, 2009.

AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


the Sangh Parivar,” a veteran RSS ac-tivist from Lucknow told Frontline.

BJP insiders point to a number offault lines in Gadkari’s style of func-tioning as the principal reason for theloss of face in Jharkhand.

“The new president is yet to havehis own sources of information withinthe party and he is dependent on thefeeds from already established powerand pressure groups in the organisa-tional hierarchy. These groups areknown to work at cross-purposes, andthat was the case in the Jharkhandimbroglio, too. One can say that Gad-kari was caught in a kind of crossfire,and after a point of time, he was sway-ing from one side to the other and, inthe process, became utterly confused.The fact that his own personal politicalantenna is not quite tuned to theunique political culture in Delhi onlyadded to the confusion. The net resultwas that he had no clue which way toswitch, when to duck or where to run,”a senior BJP leader from Uttar Pra-desh said.

Opinions expressed at various lev-els of the BJP hierarchy are broadly inagreement with this observation.

P R E S S U R E G R O U P SThe power and pressure groups thatexist in the BJP are rather well known.Broadly, one of these groups is led bySushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley withthe blessings of L.K. Advani. The sec-ond important group is the one led byformer BJP president Rajnath Singh, aone-time favourite of large sections ofthe Sangh Parivar. By all indications,the decision to withdraw support wasinitially taken at the instance of theSushma-Jaitley group.

“To be fair to Sushma Swaraj, itwas she who pointed out to Gadkarithat Soren had ditched the BJP in thecut motions vote. Left to himself Gad-kari would have had dinner withSoren, accepted the Jharkhand ChiefMinister’s story blaming Alzheimer’sfor the error in voting and allowed himto have his way. That again only pointsto his lack of understanding of Delhi’spolitical guiles,” the Uttar Pradeshleader said.

But the decision to withdraw sup-port was put on hold barely two daysafter it was taken as Rajnath Singh andhis acolyte, Arjun Munda, the formerChief Minister of Jharkhand, spoke ofthe possibility of the JMM giving upthe Chief Minister’s position to theBJP. Gadkari went along with this line.Shibu Soren’s son Hemant Soren alsoplayed along with this pressure groupand made noises about the JMM’sreadiness to “sacrifice” in the interestsof the coalition.

Shibu Soren on his part alternatelyplayed tough and soft. This in turn ledto long-drawn negotiations, whichseemed to have reached a point of fi-nality when the JMM announced onMay 8 that it would support a govern-ment led by the BJP. But Shibu Sorenstarted bargaining again, forcing theBJP into holding negotiations for an-other week.

At the end of the talks, on May 18,the BJP was made to agree to a rota-tional chief ministership. Two dayslater, however, Shibu Soren renegedon this promise, leading to completeloss of face for the BJP. At this stage,Gadkari virtually left the field to thecompeting pressure groups and wenton a foreign tour. This, too, has notgone down well with the SanghParivar.

B L O T O N R E C O R DThis early blot on Gadkari’s record hasbeen enlarged by some of his remarksagainst leaders such as MulayamSingh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party(S.P.) and Lalu Prasad of the RashtriyaJanata Dal (RJD). Questioning thecommitment of the Yadav leaders tothe anti-Congress opposition cause,Gadkari said at a public meeting that“they used to roar like tigers, but noware licking their feet like dogs”. Thisevoked widespread condemnationfrom political leaders. Activists of theRJD and the S.P. held demonstrationsand burnt Gadkari’s effigies. Gadkaricalled a press conference and with-drew his remarks, but the damage hadalready been done. It is certainly intro-spection time for the BJP and theSangh Parivar, especially in view of its

plans for revival. When Gadkari wasasked to take over from Rajnath Singhin December 2009, the RSS had essen-tially perceived the move as part of along-term strategy to reorient its polit-ical arm and bring it on track with theSangh Parivar’s cherished ideals. Theseniority of many leaders was over-looked to appoint Gadkari. This proc-ess was taken forward by none otherthan Mohan Bhagawat, the RSS sar-sangachalak. At the time, RSS insidersalso pointed to a larger game plan inthe appointment. Until then, Gadka-ri’s credentials were mainly that of acommitted, disciplined Sangh activistwho excelled as Public Works Ministerwhile the party was in government inMaharashtra. The RSS had apparentlyplanned to juxtapose these two identi-ties of Gadkari and groom him as anew avatar of former Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee, who was knownfor his superior administrative skillsand was also committed to the Hin-dutva agenda.

By all indications, the RSS topbrass was happy with Gadkari’s per-formance in the first three months ofhis tenure, particularly the way he car-ried himself at the national executiveof the BJP in Indore, Madhya Pradesh,in February. At the convention, Gad-kari seemed to get into the groove. Hetook a strong position against warringleaders and factionalism in the party.In a direct appeal to grass-roots work-ers, he stated that the problems in theparty were not because of them butbecause of the aspirations of someleaders. He even asked these leaders togive up their vaulting ambitions andfall in line with the ideology, politicsand organisation of the BJP.

But such tough talk has obviouslynot found reflection in Gadkari’s day-to-day handling of party affairs. TheJharkhand imbroglio has clearlyshown that the new party president issusceptible to pressures from seniorleaders.

Obviously, the RSS and its associ-ates in the Sangh Parivar will expectGadkari to make amends for his recentfoibles. But it will not be an easy task,given Delhi’s realpolitik. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


IN a State where more than two-thirds of ruralfamilies live below the poverty line and other socialindicators are as dismal, the process of industri-alisation that began at the turn of the century oughtto have been a cause for optimism. But, of late,people have been fighting tooth and nail the manyproposed industrial projects in Orissa because theythreaten to take away their fertile lands and live-lihood sources. The latest flashpoint was on May 15at Balitutha, the main entry point to the project areaof Posco-India Private Limited in Jagatsinghpur dis-trict, where the police fired rubber bullets and resort-ed to lathi-charge against hundreds of men andwomen who have been holding a dharna against theSouth Korean company’s steel project since January26 this year.

The protests against displacement in the Statehave shown little sign of losing steam despite public-ity campaigns by private companies “to be partnersin progress” or Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s fre-quent statements on television about peaceful indus-trialisation. Highways of the State are replete withbillboards of private companies announcing spon-sorships, scholarships, health camps or skill devel-opment programmes.

The hard sell is no more evident than in capitalBhubaneswar where workshops and seminars onOrissa’s ‘development’ in various sectors have be-come a regular feature. Both the government and theprivate sector feed the media with information thatsuits them the most. Leading editors in the State are

invited for exclusive briefings or meetings with cor-porate bigwigs.

In the far-flung districts where there is muchopposition from people to industrial projects, com-pany executives seem to have won over many localjournalists; it is not surprising for a visiting journal-ist to find scribes canvassing for the projects. TheInternet is a major tool used by corporate communi-cations departments and public relations firms toissue press releases that squarely blame people’s or-ganisations for the delay in the implementation ofindustrial projects.

The major projects facing strong anti-displace-ment protests in the State are Posco, Tata Steel, andVedanta Aluminium Limited. In Jagatsinghpur dis-trict, Posco faces opposition from the people of threegram panchayats for its proposed steel plant with acapacity of 12 million tonnes. In Kalinganagar, TataSteel is trying to acquire 3,200 acres (one acre is 0.4hectare) for a six-million tonne steel plant.

Vedanta has plans to extract bauxite from theNiyamgiri hills at Lanjigarh for its alumina refinerysituated near by. Besides, a foundation run by AnilAgarwal, the founder-director of U.K.-based Vedan-ta, is making all-out efforts to establish ‘a world-classuniversity’ alongside the Puri-Konark marine drive.The State government, however, is nonchalant aboutthe anti-displacement agitations. Indeed, the ad-ministration seems to have been left free to help thecompanies acquire land through various means. Us-ing police force against the agitators has become theorder of the day.

On January 2, 2006, 14 tribal men and womenopposing ground-levelling work on the land allottedto Tata Steel in Kalinganagar were killed in policefiring. Later, criminal cases were registered againstthose leading agitations against various companiesin different regions, and many of them were arrested.

The next phase of action against those opposingindustry-induced displacement started in Kalinga-nagar in March this year when the people of affectedvillages and activists of the Bisthapan Birodhi Jana-manch were attacked indiscriminately. More than700 armed policemen were deployed in the Kalinga-nagar area to facilitate the construction of a common

Bulldozer regime

Even as the district administrationsconcerned are making efforts tofacilitate land acquisition for theindustries, Chief Minister NaveenPatnaik has not visited any of thevillages where local people areopposing the projects.

Protests against displacement by industries in Orissa show no sign of losing

steam. B Y P R A F U L L A D A S IN BHUBANESWAR

Development Issues

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


corridor road. The local people say theroad will primarily be of use to TataSteel if the plant is established there.On March 30, hundreds of policemenentered Baligotha village in Kalinga-nagar and fired rubber bullets at theresidents and beat them up for oppos-ing the construction of the road. Ap-parently, many people who wereinjured did not go to hospital fearingarrest. A few days later, members ofthe pro-industry group attacked work-ers in the same area. A local journalistwas hurt while covering the incident,and his camera was snatched away.

The police action then shifted tovillages where people refused to vacatetheir land and homes for the Tata pro-ject. On May 12, the police opened firein Chandia village and a tribal personwas killed. The body of the victim, Lax-man Jamuda, was cremated undermysterious circumstances, and the po-lice refuted the villagers’ claim that thedeath was caused by police firing.

Rabindra Jarika, secretary of theBisthapan Birodhi Janamanch, is,however, firm about continuing the

protest. “We will not allow destructionin the name of development at anycost. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaikcannot carry out industrialisation atgunpoint,” he said.

B A L I T U T H A I N C I D E N TAs efforts were on in Kalinganagar tocarry forward the displacement proc-ess, on May 15, hundreds of policemenwent berserk at Balitutha when theytried to chase away people who wereholding a dharna against the Poscosteel project. Many people were in-jured in the incident, which occurredin the presence of senior administra-tion officials. The police were actingunder the instructions of the State gov-ernment, which was making a desper-ate attempt to facilitate theimplementation of the project, alreadydelayed by five years.

Those sitting in dharna at Bali-tutha had created a ‘laxman rekha’, re-solving to prevent the entry of anyofficial, the police or Posco employeesto the gram panchayats of Dhinkia,Nuagaon and Gadakunjang. The pro-

posed project is likely to affect 20,000people in these villages.

The local residents who ran fortheir life on May 15, however, returnedto Balitutha on May 19 with the sameresolve to resist the project and attend-ed a public meeting organised by thePosco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti. TheSamiti has been opposing the steelproject since the signing of a mem-orandum of understanding (MoU) be-tween the company and the Stategovernment in June 2005.

The leaders of six opposition par-ties – the Communist Party of India(CPI), which is backing the SangramSamiti; the Communist Party of India(Marxist); the Samajwadi Party; theRashtriya Janata Dal, the JharkhandMukti Morcha and the Forward Bloc –addressed the meeting. CPI generalsecretary A.B. Bardhan condemnedthe police repression and warned theState government against using policeforce to acquire land for the Posco pro-ject, which would affect thousands offamilies. “Use of force will only addstrength to the agitation,” he said.

KABITA SAHOO INSIDE her house, burnt during clashes between anti-Posco activists and the police at Balitutha village, on May 16.

BISWARANJAN ROUT/AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Sangram Samiti president AbhaySahoo criticised the State governmentfor not taking the village committeesinto confidence and for submittingwrong information to the Union Min-istry of Environment and Forests withregard to the use of nearly 1,200 acresof forest land in order to help the com-pany get the final forest clearance forthe project. The government said noone lived on the forest land when therewere tribal people living there and cul-tivating the forest land. Under the ex-isting laws, villagers living on forestland have genuine rights over the landon which they have been living for gen-erations together, he added.

A day after the meeting, the ChiefMinister held a discussion with theLok Sabha Member from Jagatsingh-pur, Bibhu Prasad Tarai of the CPI,and four legislators of the ruling BijuJanata Dal from the area. He gavethem a proposal that Posco would beasked to exclude 300 acres of privateland under Dhinkia panchayat fromthe 4,004 acres of land earmarked forthe steel plant. The CPI rejected it.

Bardhan, who was camping inBhubaneswar, told the media the nextday that the State government shouldshift the project to another place. Al-though he welcomed the government’swillingness for talks between seniorofficials and those opposing the pro-ject, he said there would not be anydeviation from the demand for theshifting of the site.

He also demanded that the State

government issue a White Paper onthe Rs.52,000-crore Posco projectstating how much Orissa would lose interms of land, captive iron ore and wa-ter from the Mahanadi river; the im-pact the project would have on thepeople and their livelihoods; and theimpact of the proposed captive port ofPosco on the existing major port atParadip.

V E D A N T A ’ S P R O J E C T SAs for the agitation against VedantaAluminium’s proposed bauxite miningin the Niyamgiri hills, which is consid-ered sacred by the Dongria Kondhtribal community, and the pollutionthe company’s alumina refinery is al-legedly causing, the Niyamgiri Su-raksha Samiti is hopeful that theCentre will deny mining clearance tothe company in view of the latest re-ports by three experts who were sent tothe area by the Union EnvironmentMinistry. The tribal people of Niyam-giri had failed to resist the construc-tion of the company’s refinery, but theyare now united in their fight to saveNiyamgiri from being mined (see “Bat-tle for survival”, page 37).

Similarly, hundreds of families andmany people’s organisations in Puriare strongly against the acquisition of6,000 acres of land for the VedantaUniversity project. While there aremany cases pending in different courtsagainst the project, those opposing theventure are sticking to their standagainst handing over a vast expanse of

land for the establishment of a uni-versity in alleged violation of coastalzone management rules. Acquisitionof land for the proposed steel plantproject of ArcelorMittal with a capac-ity of 12 million tonnes also faces oppo-sition in mineral-rich Keonjhardistrict, which has been in the head-lines for large-scale illegal mining.

But even as protest continues indifferent places against the handingover of thousands of acres of land, dis-placement, diversion of water meantfor irrigation to industries, illegalmining and pollution of the environ-ment, the companies, with the help ofthe local administration and politicalleaders, are trying hard to divide peo-ple in the name of development in or-der to achieve their goals. The mainopposition parties in the State, theCongress and the Bharatiya JanataParty, which express their oppositionto displacement now and then, havenot been able to force the governmentto resolve the issues of land acquisitionand displacement. Meanwhile, the dis-trict administrations concerned aremaking serious efforts to facilitateland acquisition for the industries.

The Chief Minister reiterates thathis government favours peaceful in-dustrialisation and warns that no oneshould take the law into their hands.He has also been saying that not asingle drop of water meant for irriga-tion will be diverted to industries. Hehas been attending most of the cere-monies organised at the State secretar-iat for the signing of MoUs to set upnew steel plants, alumina refineries,ports, thermal power plants and othersuch ventures.

He has also been assuring compa-nies and promoters of all cooperationfrom the government. He also reviewsregularly the progress on different in-dustrial projects such as Posco.

But he has not visited any of thevillages opposing the industrial pro-jects – even the tribal hamlets of Ka-linganagar since the 2006 police firingor Lanjigarh or the coastal villages inJagatsinghpur where innocent peoplehave been facing the wrath of the po-lice and pro-industry groups. �

RABINDRA JARIKA, BISTHAPAN Birodhi Janamanch leader, leading a rallyof tribal people against displacement in Kalinganagar area, on May 22.

PRAF

ULL

A D

AS

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


NIYAMGIRI in Orissa is all set to become ascene of local community resistance to corporateinterests. The hills of Niyamgiri, a Fifth Schedulearea under the Constitution of India and home toDongria Kondh Adivasis, are allegedly under threatfrom the proposed mining activities of the Mumbai-based Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL), a subsidiaryof the British mining giant Vedanta Resources Plc,which owns the majority stake in the now privatisedBALCO. VAL is awaiting the second stage of clear-ance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests(MoEF) for its Niyamgiri project. It got the first-stage clearance from the MoEF in September 2004.

The company has already started operations atits refinery in Lanjigarh, a town downhill from theNiyamgiri forest. The bauxite for the refinery isbrought chiefly from Vedanta’s mines at Bodai-Dal-dali in Chhattisgarh. The refinery requires three mil-lion tonnes of bauxite a year. Naturally, Niyamgiri isextremely important for Vedanta because getting therequired amount of bauxite transported from out-side would not be viable for the company.

The clearance granted to the refinery is alsofraught with controversy. The Central EmpoweredCommittee (CEC) constituted by the Supreme Courtfollowing a complaint of environmental violationsagainst Vedanta, in its report submitted to the courtin September 2005, accused Vedanta of deliberateviolations. The committee’s member secretary, M.K.Jiwrajka, belongs to the MoEF. The CEC observedthat “out of the requirement of 723.343 hectares forthe alumina refinery and 721.323 ha for the bauxite

mining, 58.943 ha and 672.018 ha, respectively, areforest land” and “since the project involved the use ofthe forest land for the alumina refinery itself, theenvironmental clearance could have been granted bythe MoEF only after the use of the forest land waspermitted under the F.C. [Forest Conservation]Act”.

The CEC concluded that “M/s Vedanta has delib-erately and consciously concealed the involvement ofthe forest land in the project… so that environmentalclearance is not kept pending for want of the F.C. Actclearance”. It further stated that in violation of theAct the project was split into alumina refinery andbauxite mining although the latter is an integral partof the project and that although the MoEF was “fullyaware that the use of the forest land for the mining atNiyamgiri hills is absolutely necessary if the aluminarefinery is to be established at Lanjigarh, the envi-ronmental clearance to the alumina refinery hasbeen accorded by the MoEF by overlooking thesefacts”.

According to information provided by VAL, the

Battle for survival

The CEC report says “M/s Vedantahas deliberately and consciouslyconcealed the involvement of theforest land in the project… so thatenvironmental clearance is not keptpending for want of the ForestConservation Act clearance”.

The tribal people of Niyamgiri hills in Orissa are determined to prevent Vedanta

Aluminium Ltd from mining the area for bauxite. B Y M A H I M P R A T A P S I N G H IN KALAHANDI

NEARLY 8,000 OF the Dongria Kondh Adivasis,who revere the Niyamgiri mountain as their kingand god, fear displacement and disruption of theircenturies-old culture once the company gets theclearance to mine the hills.

MAH

IM P

RAT

AP S

ING

H

Development Issues

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


mines of Niyamgiri belong to the Oris-sa Mining Corporation (OMC), withwhich the company has signed a mem-orandum of understanding for theprocurement of bauxite on a long-termbasis – 150 million tonnes from theLanjigarh bauxite deposits and othernearby mines of the OMC. An MoUwas signed by the OMC and SterliteIndustries (India) Ltd, also a subsidi-ary of Vedanta Resources Plc., in 1997.However, in October 2004, the OMCsigned another MoU with VAL formining bauxite in Lanjigarh and Kar-lapat. For this mining, the OMC en-tered into a joint venture with VAL, inwhich it would hold 26 per cent equityand VAL the rest.

Around 8,000 Dongria KondhAdivasis, who are a Primitive TribalGroup (PTG) notified by the Uniongovernment and who revere the Ni-yamgiri mountain as their king andgod, fear displacement and total dis-ruption of their centuries-old cultureonce the company gets the clearance tomine the hills. However, the companydismisses all such concerns.

“It has already been clarified by theState’s Minister of Steel and Mines inthe Assembly that there is no habita-tion in the mining lease area and assuch no displacement is involvedthere,” VAL’s chief operations officerMukesh Kumar told Frontline.

T H R E E - M E M B E R T E A M ’ SR E P O R T

The MoEF, in December last year,constituted a team comprising UshaRamanathan, a law researcher fromthe Delhi-based Centre for the Studyof Developing Societies; Vinod Rishi,former Additional Director General ofthe Wildlife Institute of India; and J.K.Tewari, Chief Conservator of Forests(Central), Bhubaneswar, in view of theallegations regarding the violation ofthe Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980,and to address concerns regardingtribal rights and wildlife. The teamsubmitted its report to the Ministry onFebruary 25, highlighting, among oth-er things, the gross violations of theForest (Conservation) Act and the For-est Rights Act (FRA) by the “user agen-

cy”, VAL. According to UshaRamanathan’s observations in the re-port, which has the most scathing in-dictment of irregularities andviolations committed by the company,the Dongria Kondh people feel thatalthough there is no habitation in themining area, over 200 villages on ahillside will get affected by the road,vehicles, mining activities and the dry-ing up of perennial streams and thatthe dongar (hill), which they worshipas their king and god, will be dug upand blasted.

Concern is also expressed over thedisregard for the forest rights of theAdivasis under the Scheduled Tribesand other Traditional Forest Dwellers(Recognition of Forest Rights) Act,2006. According to section 5(c) of theAct, it is to be ensured that “the habitatof forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribesand other traditional forest dwellers ispreserved from any form of destructivepractices affecting their cultural andnatural heritage”.

“Until these [forest rights] and al-lied rights are recognised, recordedand settled under the FRA, it would beunconstitutional and in breach of theFRA to disturb their [the DongriaKondh] habitat,” Usha Ramanathannotes in her report. The report alsoobserves that “disruption of the habitatand the way of life of this PTG cannotbe remediated nor compensated, andmay lead to the destruction of the Don-gria Kondh”.

The report also expresses concernover the receipt of material assistance

and benefits by the district adminis-tration from VAL. It says that “tworooms have been added to the BDOoffice [Block Development Office] inVishwanathpur and furnished by VALas a resting place for the Collectorwhen he travels on duty”.

J.K. Tewari’s observations pointtowards violations of the Forest (Con-servation) Act by the company in theconstruction of 47 pillars for its con-veyor belt. Tewari has observed thatthe area calculated by the State gov-ernment (45.6 square metres) overwhich the pillars are constructed isfaulty and that the actual area of con-struction and operation would bemuch larger. He has also observed vio-lations of MoEF guidelines in the con-struction of an incomplete mine accessroad. Apart from environmentalists,human rights activists, the CEC andthe MoEF’s three-member team, Ve-danta has also faced ire from its ownshareholders. In February this year,the Church of England withdrew its£3.8-million share from the companyciting no “level of respect for humanrights and local communities” on thepart of the company. Earlier, in 2007,the Norwegian pension fund, theworld’s second largest sovereignwealth fund, sold off its shares worth$13.2 million owing to alleged envi-ronmental and human rights viola-tions by the company’s Indiansubsidiaries.

L E G A L A M B I G U I T YThere is also a lot of ambiguity regard-ing whether VAL or Sterlite Industriesis the core representative for themining activity. The Supreme Courtorder of August 8, 2008, which al-lowed the diversion of 660.749 ha offorest land for mining, was “in matterof M/s Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd(SIIL)”.

In an earlier order dated Novem-ber 23, 2007, the court had expresseddoubts over the credibility of VAL andnoted that “keeping in mind the total-ity of the above factors (a series of factsand circumstances in relation to M/sVAL having caused environmentaldamage and human rights violations),

There is a lot ofambiguityabout who the corerepresentativefor the miningactivity is.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


we are not inclined to clear the pro-ject”. In this order, the court gave theliberty to SIIL to move the court if itagreed to comply with the modalitiessuggested by the court and categorical-ly stated that “such an application willnot be entertained if made by M/s VALor by Vedanta Resources”. However,all communications with Usha Rama-nathan, as mentioned in the report tothe MoEF, were handled by represen-tatives of VAL. This, the report hasobserved, is a violation of the SupremeCourt orders. All communication withthis correspondent too was by VALrepresentatives.

The Supreme Court’s decisions toohave come in for criticism. The newChief Justice of India, Justice S.H. Ka-padia, has been criticised for hearingcases relating to Vedanta while being ashareholder of its subsidiary, SIIL.

“When I brought up this issue ofconflict of interest of Justice Kapadia, Igot served with a contempt notice,”says Prashant Bhushan of the Cam-paign for Judicial Accountability and

Judicial Reforms. Justice Kapadia re-sponded by stating that he had de-clared that he was a shareholder ofSterlite and had invited objections,and when none was raised, he wentahead with the hearing, and thus actedaccording to the code of conduct.

T H E F O R E S T A N D I T S P E O P L EFive kilometres on a bicycle, 10 km onfoot, and five streams of water to crossalong a steep, rocky passage throughdense forest in sweltering tropicalheat, often 450 Celsius or more, meansthat getting to Jarpa, like most villagesof Niyamgiri, is not easy. Rajulgudavillage at the foothills serves as a nighthalt, from where Lenju, an activistleader of the Niyamgiri SurakhyaSamiti (Niyamgiri Protection Com-mittee), leads one to the villages uphillthe next morning.

The residents of Rajulguda greetLenju and this correspondent with araised fist and a casual ‘Lal Salaam’.That, Lenju explains, is because of theleadership activities of the Lok San-

gram Manch, a frontier organisationof the CPI-ML (New Democracy),which supports the movement inprinciple.

The entire interaction with theAdivasis is extremely secretive, andLenju constantly cautions against ask-ing the “wrong questions”. Bitter expe-riences with journalists and othervisitors in the past have meant that theDongria Kondhs do not allow anybodyuphill without prior approval from thecommittee. Taking pictures is prohib-ited as they believe that several of theirphotographs clicked earlier have madetheir way into the market.

On the way up is Serkopadi village,also home to the Dongria Kondh.“Downhill, water- and air-relatedproblems exist because of the compa-ny’s presence. Our committee willmake sure that the company does notenter the forest or it will be the samehere,” says Indra Sikoka of the village.

Another difficult trek of around 10km takes us to Jarpa, where the Don-gria Kondh Adivasis wait for us. “Ve-

MEMBERS OF THE Dongria Kondh tribe dance in a ceremony on top of the Niyamgiri mountain on February 21to protest against plans by Vedanta Aluminium Ltd to mine bauxite from the mountain.

REINHARD KRAUSE/REUTERS

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


danta is an enemy, a foreign monsterthat has come here to destroy us,” saysLahadi Sikoka, a villager, sharpening awooden stick with his axe. Thousandsof others of his tribe, spread acrossover a 100 villages in Niyamgiri, sharethe same sentiment.

It is common for the DongriaKondh to carry some weapon or theother at all times to survive againstattacks from wild animals, which areaplenty in Niyamgiri. It could be anaxe, a bow and arrows or even a crudegun. Niyamgiri means the mount ofNiyam Raja, the law god of the Don-gria Kondh, whom they also worshipas their king and ancestor. While thecompany maintains that there is no

habitation on the mountain top, whichis the proposed mining area, theKondh people believe it to be the abodeof Niyam Raja.

According to the residents of Jarpavillage, Niyamgiri is a sacred place forthem, a bank that provides them witheverything they need. Salt and oil arethe only things they need to get fromoutside.

The CEC report to the SupremeCourt in 2005 strongly recommendedagainst allowing mining in the Niyam-giri hills. It observed, among otherthings, that the rich biodiversity of Ni-yamgiri (which also happens to be anelephant reserve) would be under seri-ous threat from the company’s mining

activities. According to the report, theforest “contains sambar, leopard, tiger,barking deer, various species of birdsand other endangered species of wild-life…it has more than 300 species ofplants and trees, including about 50species of medicinal plants”.

Nalli, which is the Kuvi (the lan-guage spoken by the Kondh) word forbauxite, is a precious resource neces-sary for the survival of the forest and its36 perennial water streams because ofits water-retaining characteristics.

In late February, the Kondh heldan oath-taking ceremony on top of thehill where they resolved not to allowVedanta to enter the forest even if itgets the clearance, which they fear isimminent. In such an event, says Len-ju, the tribal people will run short ofoptions. “Once they get the final clear-ance and come here for mining, we willhave no option but to fight them toothand nail,” he says. “We have startedpreparations for the confrontation andthat is when the government will de-clare us Maoists and unleash CRPF[Central Reserve Police Force] troopson us. But we have nothing to lose. Wewill fight it out and die but will not letgo of our forest,” he says.

In an exclusive conversation withFrontline, Union Minister Jairam Ra-mesh said the Ministry was not in anyhurry to give the clearance. “The teamsent by us found that Vedanta has vio-lated the terms and conditions underwhich the approval was given to them.The project involves forest and non-forest areas. These guys have alreadystarted work in the non-forest areas,which is a violation,” he said. The Min-ister admitted that mining would spelldoom for the mountain and its peopleand also expressed surprise at the factthat the Supreme Court overlookedthe recommendations of the CEC.

“If they manage to get the clear-ance, Niyamgiri will be destroyed for-ever. But there is no hurry and we areexploring all options. The SupremeCourt has given its approval, but I haveto say it seems strange as it is the onlycase where the Supreme Court has notaccepted the recommendations of theCEC,” he said. �

THE absolute secrecy maintainedby the Dongria Kondh is not with-out reason. Recent reports in thelocal media suggest a Maoist pres-ence in the Niyamgiri area. Jour-nalists in Bhawanipatna, theheadquarters of Kalahandi district,say that the Orissa government is inthe process of declaring Niyamgiri aMaoist-affected area. The CentralReserve Police Force has been de-ployed in neighbouring Munigudablock in Rayagada district.

Thirty-five per cent of Niyam-giri falls in Kalahandi district andthe rest under Rayagada district,which has officially been declared aMaoist-affected area. An atmo-sphere of fear and paranoia is evi-dent even in Bhawanipatna. Severalpolice checkpoints have been putup in and around the small town toscan people and vehicles regularly.Sanjeev Panda, Deputy InspectorGeneral of Police of Koraput range,confirmed the deployment of troopsat Muniguda but expressed igno-rance about the presence of Maoistsin Niyamgiri. “I am not aware of anyMaoist presence in Niyamgiri,” hetold Frontline. “Yes, troops have

been deployed in Muniguda, butthey are not for Niyamgiri.”

Reliable sources, however, saidthe government would soon startcombing operations in the mannerof Operation Green Hunt in Ni-yamgiri, which the tribal people saydefinitely will result in a “war”.

An official of Vedanta claimedthat the tribal people were a threatto national security even as helashed out at a report brought outby Amnesty International, titled“Don’t mine us out of existence”.“The report amounts to contempt ofcourt as the issues raised in it havealready been considered by the Su-preme Court. Amnesty has blamedthe Orissa government and theGovernment of India for not grant-ing territorial rights to Adivasiswhich is a serious threat to the secu-rity of the country. Further, like theUnited States, Australia, France,Japan and China, India is not a sig-natory to the International LabourOrganisation treaty on indigenouspeople, which proves that the Am-nesty report is absolutely baseless,”said the official.

Mahim Pratap Singh

Maoist presence?

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


THE sleepy surroundings of Madban and nearbyvillages in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra wereroused to action sometime in October 2005 whenthe Government of India sanctioned the JaitapurNuclear Power Project (JNPP). The project, pro-posed to be built by the Nuclear Power Corporation

of India Limited (NPCIL) with evolutionary pressur-ised reactors (EPR) from Areva, France, set off aflurry of writ petitions, requests under the Right toInformation Act, and widespread protests whichculminated in a rather stormy public hearing atground zero in Madban.

If the public hearing, organised by the Mah-arashtra Pollution Control Board on May 16, is any-thing to go by, the people of Madban andneighbouring villages are highly incensed at the waythings are. Apparently, none of them has acceptedthe cheque for compensation for land acquired forthe project under the Land Acquisition Act. TheNPCIL, however, says some people have acceptedcompensation (see interview).

The proposed project, the largest of its kind in theworld when completed, will have six units of 1,650MWe each. One unit of 1,650 MWe plant operating

Critical mass

At the public hearing, the maingrouse was that only Madban wasgiven copies of the EnvironmentImpact Assessment and not othervillages. People also raised questionsabout the cost of the project.

The protest by residents of Madban and neighbouring villages in Maharashtra

against the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project is gaining momentum. B Y M E E N A M E N O N

VILLAGERS MARCHING TO the site of the public hearing at Madban on May 16.

PHO

TOG

RAP

HS:

MEE

NA

MEN

ON

Development Issues

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


at full capacity can generate 36-39 mil-lion units a day, according to theNPCIL booklet on the project.

The NPCIL initially submitted anapplication for 976 hectares, but thefinal figure is 938.026 ha (692.311 hafor the site and 245.715 ha for the resi-dential complex) from five villages –Madban, Karel, Niveli, Varilwada andMithgavane. While no irrigated land isbeing acquired, Madban village alonewill lose 690.401 ha, and the residentsare not excited about living in thebackyard of a nuclear plant. In addi-tion, they are upset that the NPCILsays much of the land is barren.

Pravin Gavhankar, president of theAnu Urja Prakalp Sangharsh Samiti,

scoffs at this contention. “This is anarea where we harvest paddy everyyear, and they say we do not grow any-thing here. In 2005, many farmersfrom here were compensated for croplosses. Would this happen if it was bar-ren land?” he asks. The gram sabhas inall the villages have passed resolutionsopposing the project.

Located on a beautiful coastfringed with palms, Madban gets itsname from its abundant coconutgroves. Sunlight barely creeps throughthe lush green cover of coconut palmsand mango and cashew trees over thevillage.

Vijay Raut has an orchard on theproject site on which grass grows all

around. In the distance on RajapurBay is the Jaitapur lighthouse fromwhich the project gets its name thoughit is situated in Madban. The govern-ment considered it appropriate be-cause the plant would come up withinternational cooperation. Raut’s fa-ther was among those who laid thefoundation in 1957 for the lighthouse,which offers a bird’s eye view of theproject site and the aquamarine seaaround. He said, “Look at this land, it isfull of life. There is paddy, mango, andthe cattle graze here. It is useful for us.How can the government dismiss it asbarren?”

According to the Environment Im-pact Assessment (EIA) report, the to-

C.B. JAIN is the Project Director ofthe Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project.In this interview to Frontline, he pre-sents the project authorities’ point ofview.

What is the update on the landacquisition process? Has all the landbeen acquired and have peopleaccepted the cheques? What is therate per hectare the government orthe NPCIL has paid for the land?

The land acquisition process hasbeen completed. All the land has beenacquired and some of the people haveaccepted the cheques. The land is ac-quired from five villages, namely,Madban, Varilwada, Karel, Mithga-vane and Niveli.

The basic rates for all the threecategories of land are different andalso vary from village to village. Inaddition to the ‘basic rate’, each own-er of the land is entitled to get 30 percent ‘solacium amount’ on the basicamount as well as 12 per cent interestper annum from the date of issue ofnotice under Section 4 of the LandAcquisition Act until the date of dec-

laration of land for the particular vil-lage. This period for interestcalculation varies from 799 days to966 days for the above five villagesdepending on the date of issue of suchnotices and declaration of award.Based on the above, the details of theamount being paid as compensationto owners are: Basic rate per hectare:Kharif Rs.1,15,500 to 4,01,000; var-kas Rs.65,000 to 2,67,500; and potk-haraba Rs.33,750 to 66,875. The finalrate, including 30 per cent solaciumand 12 per cent interest being paid toowners: Rs.1,80,490 to 6,48,653;Rs.1,01,574 to 4,32,705; andRs.52,740 to 1,08,176.

Are there any people from theaffected villages who have acceptedthe cheques for land? If so, pleasegive me their number. How muchland has been acquired and fromwhich villages?

Some people have accepted thecheque. This information is not avail-able with us as cheques are being dis-tributed by the Special LandAcquisition Officer, Office of the Dis-

trict Collector, Ratnagiri. The landacquired is as follows: Madban -690.401 ha; Varilvada - 1.910 ha; Ka-rel - 70.686 ha; Niveli - 72.614 ha;Mithgavane - 72.614 ha. Total -938.026 ha.

At the public hearing on May 16 atMadban, Vivek Monteiro raised thequestion of the cost of the project. Hesaid according to the latest EconomicSurvey of Maharashtra the tworeactors would cost Rs.60,000 crore.If so what will be the cost of thepower eventually?

The unit energy cost from thisplant will be comparable with theelectricity from thermal/indigenousnuclear power plants.

People have raised serious questionsabout the EIA at the hearing. Do youthink it is competently done andreflects a true picture of the situationat the project site? Also, there areissues of storage of spent fuel after100 years. Could you please clarify?

Yes, the EIA is done competently.The radioactive waste after 100 years

‘EIA is done competently’Interview with C.B. Jain, Project Director, JNPP. B Y M E E N A M E N O N

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


WOMEN WORKING IN a field on the project site in Madban. The village willlose 690.401 hectares, and its residents are not excited about living in thebackyard of a nuclear plant. In addition, they are upset that the NPCIL saysmuch of the land is barren.

tal population of the area within a 32-km radius of the project is 1,87,952,and more than 28.62 per cent of themain workers are engaged in agricul-tural and fishing activities. Of the2,300 affected landholders, 826 farm-ers will lose all their land to the project.Of them, 768 are from Madban while14, 19 and 25 are from Niveli, Kareland Mithgavane respectively. The resi-dential complex will be spread overKarel and two nearby villages.

Dattaram Narayan Dalvi and hiswife, Darshana, stand to lose two acres(one acre is 0.4 ha) to the project. “Werefuse to accept the cheques. We aredependent on the land. We don’t haveanyone working in Mumbai to help us

along. Even the gram panchayat haspassed a resolution. As for the prom-ised jobs, who is going to give them tous?” asks Darshana.

“The money they are giving uswon’t last long, but our land and treeswill,” says Dalvi. “The land which thegovernment calls rocky is also produc-tive for us. We grow mango there andthe cattle graze on the grass. No one istalking about money here. That is notthe issue,” he adds.

At Niveli village, Anil Tirlotkar’sfather, Jagannath, has got a letter say-ing he will get Rs.1.78 lakh for his land.“We got a notice way back in 2005 for asurvey of the land. They did not tell uswhat it was for. Then later we wereasked to be present for a joint survey,but they did not let us anywhere nearthe survey,” he says. “We have to dividethis money among so many claimantsin the family. I will get aboutRs.16,000.”

At first they were told only the so-called barren land would be acquired,but all that changed later. According tothe official note, about 185 landownersfrom the village will get Rs.55.91 lakh.There have been no takers for this untilnow.

“Is this how projects are done? Arewe living in a democracy? This is worsethan the British times,” says Keru Kat-kar.

Milind Desai of Mithgavane says:“Background radiation from this mas-sive project is a concern. We now thinkcoal is a better option than this. We feelwater, air, everything will be polluted.Why is this lovely coastline chosen forthis dangerous project? They cannotgive us simple processing units for ourfruit crop. We would have given landfree for any other project but not thisone.”

He is also unhappy that the offi-cials say that the laterite is useless. “Weget Rs.15 for a foot of the rock whichhas many uses here,” he says.

At the public hearing, the maingrouse was that only Madban was giv-en copies of the EIA and not the otheraffected villages. However, the hearingwent on after the authorities acknowl-edged the lapse.

People also raised questions aboutthe cost of the project, but NPCIL offi-cials told them that it was still undernegotiation. However, Economic Sur-vey of Maharashtra 2009-10 says In-dia and France signed a bilateralagreement in September 2008 to worktogether for the use of nuclear energyfor peaceful purposes. In February2009, the NPCIL and Areva signed amemorandum of understanding forthe construction of two nuclear plantsof 1,650 MWe each in Jaitapur with atotal investment of Rs.60,000 crore.

could be disposed of in deep under-ground geological repositories withprotective barriers.

There is a lot of resistance to theproject. How do you expect toovercome that? When do youexpect to start construction andstart the first reactor?

We are having a continuous dia-logue with all the project-affectedpeople as well as their representa-tives since December 2005. We arehopeful that we will start the projectconstruction with their support. Weexpect to start the construction by2012 and start the first reactor by2017-18.

What is the type of reactors youwill be using and have they beenused anywhere else in the world?At the hearing it was submittedthat Areva is building a reactor inFinland which is still underconstruction and the cost is 5.3billion euros. Is this correct?

It is proposed to implementEPR NPP units at the Jaitapur sitein technical cooperation with Are-va, France. EPR units are underconstruction in Finland, Franceand China. We cannot comment onthe cost of the Finland EPR.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Development Issues

The commissioning of the first twounits is scheduled for late 2017 andend of 2018. While no one will be dis-placed by the project, there is the cru-cial issue of livelihoods. The 10 or 12fishing villages in the vicinity of theproject will be affected, says AmjadAbdul Latif Borkar, former chairper-son of the Sakhri Nate MachchimarSociety. The annual catch is worthabout Rs.15 crore. In Nate alone thereare 200 big trawlers and 250 smallboats. Nearly 6,000 people depend onfishing in the area and more than10,000 benefit from it indirectly.

Vivek Monteiro of the Centre ofIndian Trade Unions (CITU), who co-ordinated the submissions for theteam representing the Indian Schoolof Social Sciences, Mumbai, the Shra-mik Sangh and the Lok Vidnyan Sang-hatana, raised critical issues of nuclearsafety, the cost of power, preparednessin case of a terror strike, and storage ofspent fuel.

The submissions filed by thesegroups and the Konkan Bachao Sam-iti, coordinated by Adwait Pednekar,takes up the EIA report by the Nation-al Environmental Engineering Re-search Institute (NEERI), Nagpur,which has ruled out any adverse im-pact on the flora, fauna and humaninhabitants. The EIA report says thatradioactive releases from the plant areexpected to be insignificant and theirimpact will be negligible. It says thedischarge of liquid effluents from theplant will be within the limits stipulat-ed by the Atomic Energy RegulatoryBoard (AERB). The report also rulesout any discharge of conventional pol-lutants in the aquatic environmentand hence any harm to the marinefauna and flora.

In its critique of the EIA, the Kon-kan Bachao Samiti says, “Throughoutthe voluminous report it is hard to finda single observation of negative impactof the project on any parameter. Read-ing the report and its summary conclu-sions, one feels ashamed and appalledto see what is going on in the name ofscience in India. The report reads as ifit were written by the public relationsdepartment of the NPCIL or Areva.

This is necessary and sufficient reasonto reject the entire report.”

Attacking the “seriously flawed”EIA, Monteiro and other activists de-manded that it was essential to carryout a cumulative EIA for the Konkanand an assessment of the carrying ca-pacity of the narrow Konkan stripflanked by the Western Ghats – one ofthe 34 global hot spots of biodiversity –where the Maharashtra governmenthas accorded permission to eight coal-based power plants with a capacity of21,000 MW, in addition to this nuclearpower plant and several miningprojects.

Monteiro used the summary Prob-abilistic Safety Assessment of Areva’sproposed nuclear reactor in the UnitedKingdom to drive home the point thatthe reactors were not built to resistterror strikes. In the U.K., Areva hasplaced on record that the design of itsEPR power plant does not address therisks of radioactivity release arisingout of internal or external maliciousacts.

However, after the 9/11 terroristattack, the issue of Design Basis Threat(DBT) has become paramount for thesafety of nuclear installations in theUnited States. The Energy Policy Act,2005, of the U.S. was passed specifical-

ly to address this issue. “Nuclear powerplant vulnerability to deliberate air-craft crashes has been a continuingissue. After much consideration, theNuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) voted February 17, 2009, to re-quire all new nuclear power plants toincorporate design features that wouldensure that, in the event of a crash by alarge commercial aircraft, the reactorcore would remain cooled or the reac-tor containment would remain intact,and radioactive releases would not oc-cur from spent fuel storage pools”(Mark Holt and Anthony Andrews,“Nuclear Power Plant Security andVulnerabilities, Congressional Re-search Service, prepared for Membersand Committees of Congress, March18, 2009”).

It is not publicly known if theAERB in India has made any new li-censing or safety rules to address theproblem of terrorist attack on nuclearfacilities, Monteiro says. Two seriousgaps in the EIA are the question ofspent fuel storage and a decommis-sioning plan for the reactors.

The EIA says, “The solid waste dis-posal site is fenced, secured and de-signed to store waste for a sufficientlylong time of the order of 100 years.” Itis silent on storage after this period.

On decommissioning, the EIAsays, “At the end of the operating life ofthe operating units, which would bearound 60 years for EPR-type NPPs,proposed to be established at Jaitapursite, a detailed decommissioning planwill be worked out.”

Lastly, Monteiro says that theNPCIL needs to disclose the cost of theproject and the tariff. A similar plantbeing built in Finland, the OlkiluotoPlant, has incurred a cost of 5.3 billioneuros until date for 1,630 MWe. Thistranslates into Rs.19.5 crore per MWe.Clearly, a cost benefit analysis for theJaitapur project is needed, he says.

In the past in the Konkan there wasthe terrible experience of Enron sellingits power at above Rs.7 a unit and caus-ing the state utility to stop buying it.Even as the NPCIL is optimistic aboutwinning over the villagers in Ratnagiri,serious questions remain. �

REPAIRING NETS IN Sakhri Natevillage. Local residents fear that 10or 12 fishing villages in the vicinity ofthe project will be affected.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


ON January 7, a Division Bench of the BombayHigh Court consisting of Acting Chief Justice J.N.Patel and Justice B.R. Gawai asked the representa-tive of the Government of Maharashtra: “Do youhave so many funds as to spend on these people [thedistillery owners]? What is anessential commodity for you –liquor or foodgrains?” With thisrhetorical question, the judgesstayed the disbursement offunds, almost Rs.50 crore eachto the 23 distilleries licensed tomake alcohol from coarse cere-als under a 2007 scheme called“Foodgrain-based Liquid andIntegrated Material FinancialAid”.

The judges provided tempo-rary relief to the petitioners, theBhimshakti Vichar Manch, anon-governmental organisationfrom Aurangabad, and ChetanKamble, a social activist, whohad filed a petition under publicinterest litigation (PIL) chal-lenging the scheme. But theirtriumph was short-lived. Twomonths later, the court dismis-sed their petition saying the ju-diciary did not have thejurisdiction to interfere in a pol-

icy decision. The State government is now free todisburse Rs.50 crore to each of the 23 licenseddistilleries.

B U S I N E S S O F S U B S I D I E S The background to these developments goes back toJune 8, 2007, when Vilasrao Deshmukh was theChief Minister. A government resolution announcedaid for alcohol production from foodgrains such aswheat, rice, jowar and bajra. The alcohol producedwas to be potable. Under the scheme, a subsidy ofRs.10 was to be granted to manufacturers for eachlitre of alcohol produced from foodgrains. Thiswould be in the form of a rebate on excise dutypayable by the distillery owner.

A total of 32 factories were to be granted permis-sion to manufacture liquor under this scheme. Fourfactories were already functioning. So, a total of 36factories were ultimately to be producing liquor from

grain.There was no dearth of take-

rs for the scheme, and by Janu-ary this year 23 licences wereissued. The total alcohol pro-duction capacity from the 23distilleries would be 10.85 lakhlitres a day or about 25 crorelitres a year. This is a significantquantity considering that theState’s 2008-09 output of spirit,both industrial and potable, was36 crore litres. And the businessof making spirit becomes moreprofitable when subsidies areavailable. If the distilleries areset up in the notified backward‘D’ zones such as Marathwadaand Vidarbha, they are offeredcapital reimbursement of up to150 per cent or Rs.37.50 crore(whichever is less). And if theyare in the even more backward‘D+’ zone, this increases to 200per cent or Rs.50 crore (which-ever is less).

Food or drink?

The government claims the schemewill fetch farmers better prices fortheir crops. But critics say thegains to the distilleries will bedisproportionate to any advantagethe farmer might get from divertingfoodgrains to alcohol production.

The Maharashtra government’s scheme to subsidise production of alcohol from

foodgrains attracts strong criticism. B Y L Y L A B A V A D A M IN MUMBAI

JOWAR FORMS AN important part ofthe poor man’s diet in Maharashtra.Diverting jowar crops to alcoholproduction can pose a serious threatto food security.

K.K

. MU

STAF

AH

Agriculture

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


“Clearly, the government wanted arush of investment and they achievedit,” said Krishna Khopkar, State vicepresident of the All India Kisan Sabha.“Political leaders have benefitted themost from this scheme. The entire ex-ercise is designed to promote theyounger generation of politicians…. Itis an opportunity to make moneyswiftly.” Kamble too had noted in hisPIL petition that it was the wealthywho derived the maximum benefitfrom this scheme.

S T A T E ’ S S T A N D The government claims that the alco-hol industry needs subsidies becausethe capital expenditure involved is rel-atively high. However, its assertionthat the scheme will help farmers wholacked irrigation facilities and grewonly rain-fed crops such as jowar hasbeen challenged by the Opposition. Inthe 2009 winter session of the StateAssembly, the Shiv Sena said thescheme would lead to a scarcity offoodgrains and rise in food prices.

Chief Minister Ashok Chavan de-fended the scheme but said new pro-jects would be suspended. He said,“Many people have invested crores ofrupees and it is difficult to scrap thescheme at this stage. However, sinceMaharashtra is facing a major food-grain crunch, we are going to suspend

all new projects of making alcoholfrom foodgrains.” This was the onlytime that the government agreed withthe argument presented in the PILpetition, which said: “The foodgrainthat is used to make alcohol can beused to feed the poor. Maharashtra hasa scarcity of essential foodgrains and iscompelled to import from foreigncountries.”

Debunking the scheme as an “eye-wash”, Khopkar said: “Coarse food-grains are usually in short supply in themarket. More than 40 per cent of themcome to the market almost immediate-ly after harvest because farmers aredesperate for money. This desperationmakes it easy for middlemen to pur-chase for less than the mandatoryRs.10 a kilogram. Grain is usually pur-chased at Rs.8 a kilo. And it is pur-chased mainly by the factory agents.”

The State government’s stand onfood security has seen a series of flip-flops. In February, while replying tothe petition, it asserted that therewould be no threat to food security if

jowar was used to produce alcohol. Anaffidavit filed by Prakash Gaud, JointSecretary, Home Department, said:“Under the Public Distribution System(PDS), jowar has not been distributedfrom January 2006 to December2009. Therefore, there was no threatto food security in using jowar as rawmaterial for production of alcohol.”The affidavit also claimed that “jowaris not the primary staple in Maharash-tra”.

Khopkar pointed out that thescheme was launched with a view topick up spoiled grain for the produc-tion of industrial alcohol. This wasmeant to help farmers if their grainwent bad but what has happened issomething else.

“The soiled or rotten grain is col-lected by PDS agents, who sell thegood grain with them to distilleryagents and the bad grain through thePDS. Thus needy people in the PDSsystem get bad grain to eat, while the

A PROTEST RALLY in Solapurorganised by the Communist Partyof India (Marxist) on April 27.Farmers of Satara, Solapur andSangli have rallied under the AllIndia Kisan Sabha banner andrefuse to sell jowar to distilleries.

FARMERS OPPOSED TO the production of grain-based alcohol submitting apetition to the Collector of Solapur district on April 27.

CO

UR

TESY

: KIS

AN S

ABH

A

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


good grain goes into the making ofalcohol,” he said.

When faced with criticism aboutthe ethics of growing a cheap, nutri-tious cereal for alcohol production, theState government justified the projectby saying that it fetched better pricesfor farmers. Quoting the economistSulabha Brahme, Khopkar said theamount of money made from jowar-based alcohol was 11 times more thanwhat was paid to the farmer. At thesame time, it argued, the subsidy offsetthe greater costs involved in producingalcohol from grain rather than frommolasses.

Critics allege that the profits thedistilleries made are disproportionateto any advantage that the farmermight get from diverting his producefor non-food use. In reality, thescheme protects distilleries from thevolatility in the prices of molasses. Butsimilar safety nets are not available forthe farmer who will continue to fall

prey to the wiles of market intermedi-aries since the distilleries source grainnot directly from them but throughagents. Neither is there a minimumprocurement price prescribed to pro-tect the farmer. Thus, the subsidies aretrade-distorting and divert grain thatwould have been consumed by people– especially the poor – or used as ani-mal feed.

Gaud’s affidavit underlined themain intention of the scheme. Itstated: “There was a surge of 80 percent in the demand for industrial alco-hol in recent years over the averageconsumption of 20-22 crore litres perannum. During the last two years, therequirement of alcohol, both for pota-ble as well as for industrial use, hadgone up substantially…. Combined ex-pected future requirement for indus-trial and potable sectors was projectedat around 60 crore litres.”

The affidavit stated that the world-wide trend was to use foodgrains for

liquor production. It pointed out thatmolasses, preferred until now for theproduction of alcohol, had been re-placed by coarse cereals. The switch isa convenient one. When the cultiva-tion of sugarcane was criticised as acriminal waste of water and land, allobjections were brushed aside by thecane lobby. Gaud’s affidavit states thatbringing more areas under sugarcanecultivation was not a “realistic or feasi-ble option” and that the processes in-volved in producing molasses arepolluting. The government had chosento ignore these facts earlier. Why? Be-cause at that time the production ofalcohol from coarse cereals was a cot-tage industry and its huge commercialvalue had not been discovered. Thefact is also that molasses have nowbeen diverted to the making of indus-trial ethanol. For investors, coarse ce-reals are the new sugarcane since theyare cheaper to grow, are not water-intensive, and can be cultivatedwidely.

Given the gap between demandand availability, it is not clear wherethe raw material will come from. Asper current indications, the 36 facto-ries would require a total of 70 lakhtonnes of foodgrains to producearound 15 lakh tonnes of liquor. Overthe past 10 years, the production ofjowar has been falling. In 1996-97,56.92 lakh hectares of land was underjowar. By 2003-04, this fell to 45.43lakh ha. According to Economic Sur-vey of Maharashtra 2008-09, “duringthe year 2008-09, the area under food-grains reduced by 20 per cent, result-ing in reduction of crop production by31 per cent in total kharif foodgrainsproduction. This fall was mainly inkharif jowar, bajra and all pulses.”

Khopkar says that in the past 25years, the State government has re-laxed restrictions on prohibition with aview to amassing revenue from excise.First came the wineries, under Nation-alist Congress Party president SharadPawar’s initiative; then came the sugarfactory distilleries; and now the coarsegrain alcohol project. And all this, hesays, “is done in the name of helpingthe poor”. �C

OU

RTE

SY: K

ISAN

SAB

HA

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


DOES political dissent, resonant in a prolongedprotest movement, pose an existential threat to ademocratic order? The answer is yes, if one goes byThailand’s May 19 military crackdown, supported bycivilian Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, on thou-

sands of unarmed protesters at their main campsitein the fashionable commercial district of Bangkok.

The protesters, who were evidently joined bysome armed militants, were agitating against Ab-hisit’s military-backed rule. The banner of protestwas, and remains, the United Front for Democracyagainst Dictatorship (UDD). Encouraged and “in-spired” by the duly elected and military-deposedleader Thaksin Shinawatra, now a proclaimed fugi-tive in self-imposed exile, the UDD had occupiedBangkok’s commercial hub for 45 days when theArmy and other security forces cracked down onMay 19.

No firm figures of deaths and injuries were an-nounced immediately after the tragedy. Abhisit,while regretting the casualties among the protesters,did not go into specifics. The security operation was

Final assaultTHAILAND: The military cracks down on pro-Thaksin protesters in Bangkok,

triggering an unprecedented wave of arson. B Y P . S . S U R Y A N A R A Y A N A

Throughout March, the protestleaders were mobilising supportfrom across the country for streetrallies to keep Prime MinisterAbhisit Vejjajiva under sustainedpolitical pressure.

world affairs

ARMY CHIEF GENERAL Anupong Paojinda listens as Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva speaks during apre-recorded weekly television address in Bangkok on April 24. Abhisit said in the address that theauthorities would retake the anti-government protest site in Bangkok.

HAN

DO

UT/

AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


punctuated and followed by an un-precedented arson spree across severalparts of Bangkok, particularly in thecommercial district. Government andprivate buildings, including hugeshopping malls, were gutted. The au-thorities blamed the fires on “rogueprotesters” and armed militants, whowere said to have somehow escapedthe Army’s professional operation,which was carried out according to “in-ternational standards” of riot control.

The authorities also reported agruesome episode of mass murder at aBuddhist temple inside the UDD’sheavily barricaded campsite. The mas-sacre was said to have occurred beforethe security forces reached the templesite and before an overnight curfew

was imposed on Bangkok and 23 of the76 Thai provinces. The night curfewwas later extended for several days.With the Thai Army categorically dis-owning any responsibility for the tem-ple massacre, speculation centred onwhether the UDD protesters or theirarmed political opponents were toblame.

One Minister noted that at least 60persons were killed as a result of theUDD protest and the responses it elic-ited from different quarters since mid-March. An Italian photojournalist wasamong the dead and three other in-ternational journalists were injured.Non-official estimates, however,placed the death at over 80 in the con-text of the latest crackdown and the

widespread violence that preceded it.Unofficially, at least 1,800 people aresaid to have been injured since theUDD campaign began last year.

Several specific events sparked offdifferent episodes of protest during theprolonged campaign for democracyand for a fair political rehabilitation ofThaksin. The UDD, as emphasised bya South-East Asian political analyst,militated against the perceived “Hit-lerisation of Thaksin”.

Of all the specific flashpoints atvarious stages of this pro-democracycampaign, the killing of a “renegade”Army officer who had become the “mil-itant” strategist of the UDD sparkedthe chain reaction that culminated inthe crackdown. The former major-

SOLDIERS WALK THROUGH a barricade put up by protesters in Bangkok during the crackdown on May 19.

WAS

ON

WAN

ICH

AKO

RN

/AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


general was shot at when he was talk-ing to a few people, including journal-ists, at the inner perimeter of thebarricaded campsite. No person orgroup claimed responsibility for thesniper fire. The UDD guru died a fewdays later.

Long before that sharp-shootingincident, the UDD had converted itssprawling campsite into a live-in facil-ity for thousands of protesters, whoincluded a number of women, childrenand senior citizens. The facility, com-plete with a conventional platform forpolitical speeches and cultural shows,was heavily fortified with assorted ma-terials, including tyres.

Days prior to the fall of the UDDbastion, the area was abuzz withpeace-time entertainment. Activities

aimed at caricaturing Abhisit or hero-worshipping Thaksin interspersed theinevitable political speeches and otherforms of protest such as slogan-raisingand a variety of gesticulations. To-wards what turned out to be the finalstages of the pre-crackdown protest,the focus increasingly shifted towardsdemocracy as a demand at stake, with-out undue reference to the personal-ities on the scene or behind the scenes.

The UDD activists, often dubbedthe Red Shirts after the colour of theirchosen attire, were drawn mostly fromthe poorer sections and the rural re-gions. In contrast, some leaders of themovement – none among them be-came a political hero or a householdname – were almost as sophisticated intheir ways as the main players in the

camp of Abhisit’s loyalists and the mil-itary’s cheerleaders.

Inconsistent with the ferociousdisplay of military might on May 19,the authorities had earlier turned theother way when the UDD organisersmeticulously took over the roads andfields in Bangkok. This act of lenienceor dereliction of duty on the part of theauthorities was later used to projectthe current military-civilian establish-ment as a benign force friendly to-wards constitutionally permittedpeaceful protests.

Making sense, in the context ofsuch an image-peddling exercise, wasthe assertion of the authorities on May19 that the security forces moved intothe UDD’s main campsite only afterraiding a nearby park and capturing

AT a time when people power is onthe rise in East Asia, in countries asfar apart as Indonesia and Japan,Thailand has placed a premium onmilitary power in domestic politics.The issue is whether Thailand’s cur-rent circumstances will justify thiscourse. An answer is not easy be-cause the Thai Army, long used toexercising control over civilian poli-tics, did allow the protesters muchtime and space before movingagainst them.

At a time when the Filipinoswere electing Benigno Aquino III,son of Corazon Aquino, a peoplepower icon, as their next President,Thailand’s military-backed civilianPrime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva,took the military’s help for a crack-down on thousands of protesters inBangkok on May 19. And, the Asso-ciation of Southeast Asian Nationswas not pleased at the way Thailand,a key founder-member, went aboutsorting out its crisis this time.

Powerful interest groups withinThailand tend to see the current cri-sis far from resolved as this is writ-

ten, in a uniquely Thai way, ofcourse. This unique way flows from:(1) the rich-poor divide; (2) the de-mocracy-stability debate in a contextof some political role for the militarybloc; (3) the social ethos of the Budd-hist majority in a country with anincreasingly vocal Muslim minority;and (4) the sanctity of national unityas preserved by the healing touch ofthe revered constitutional monarch,King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

In trying to sort out the latestcrisis, Abhisit and Army chief Anu-pong Paochinda have navigated, formost part, in the context of the rich-poor divide and the democracy-sta-bility debate. The occasional effortsby the protesters to appeal to theKing were not encouraged by theroyalists, who often team up with theelite in the civil-professional andmilitary hierarchies to run the coun-try. And, given the general directionthat the protest took, there was noscope for the social ethos to comeinto play. Although an unexplainedmassacre took place in or near aBuddhist temple shortly before cur-

few was enforced following thecrackdown, there were no suggesti-ons from any quarter, as of May 24,that the latest crisis had anything todo with the country’s social fabric.

Clearly visible, though, after thecrackdown, was the potential dangerof a further polarisation of forcesalong the rich-poor divide. Mostprotesters came from Thailand’spoor sections in the countryside. Re-gardless of the intensity of the cam-paign rhetoric of a “class war” in themaking, protest leaders such as Jak-rapob Penkair have said that there isnot much time left for reconciliationacross this national divide.

Another potential danger is thatof mismanaging the democracy-sta-bility debate. As experts such as Pa-vin Chachavalpongpun point out,there are already signs of “a seismicshift in the people’s politicalthoughts” towards a more pluralistdemocracy in societal, rather thanparty-statistical, terms. The peoplein focus here are the non-elitesections.

P.S. Suryanarayana

The military route

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


"RED SHIRT" PROTESTERS detained during the Army operation.

DAM

IR S

AGO

LJ/R

EUTE

RS

arms stored there by the front’s “ter-rorist elements”. Officials fought shy ofusing the term “crackdown” to de-scribe the operations inside the UDD’snucleus zone of protest. The oper-ations followed a resistance-free entryinto the zone by heavily armed troopsin armoured vehicles. Unsurprisingly,these vehicles sliced their way throughthe UDD’s barricades like a knifethrough butter.

The Thai Foreign Ministry latertook issue with some international hu-man rights groups for criticising whatthey portrayed as targeted firing at un-armed protesters on May 19 in Bang-kok and elsewhere on a few other days.Independent accounts of what reallyhappened during the May 19 oper-ations are not authentic, given that al-most all observers had, for reasons ofsafety, vacated the UDD’s campsite.

At the start of the crackdown, witha few independent observers still onthe scene, some UDD leaders urgedthe protesters, estimated to have num-bered between 3,000 and 4,000 atthat time, to call off their campaign bydispersing peacefully from the venue.The authorities had by then promisedsafe exit for those unarmed protesterswho might not wish to offer resistancein any way to the marching column ofsoldiers. In the event, the Thai Armydid keep its word. As it transpired, anunspecified number of UDD leaders,non-militant in their demeanour,quickly surrendered after urging theprotesters to disperse.

Official accounts later stated thatsome protesters, however, did chal-lenge the soldiers and other securitypersonnel. An arson spree and curfewsfollowed the main crackdown.

By May 24, Abhisit, widely seen asa sophisticated intellectual with nogreat political knack for feeling thepeople’s pulse, was busy trying to livedown his image as the military’s suavebut unpopular proxy. Even as he raisedthe tone and tenor of his appeals fornational reconciliation, political con-troversies over the crackdown andThaksin’s looming presence in thebackground showed no immediatesigns of disappearing. For that, Abhisit

could only blame the manner in whichhe allowed the crisis to balloon for wellover a year. Of particular importancewas the montage of events that preced-ed the crackdown. The UDD launchedthe latest phase of its protest move-ment on March 12.

The UDD is an umbrella group ofpro-democracy thought-leaders andThaksin-loyalists besides some left-of-centre social conscience votaries. It isno surprise, therefore, that the UDDhas often spoken in many voices, de-pending primarily on the core views ofone leader or another at the move-ment’s frontlines. No UDD leaderdoes, of course, command the recog-nition or political stature of Thaksin orAbhisit or the Thai Army chief, Anu-

pong Paochinda. Ranged against theUDD is the so-named People’s Alli-ance for Democracy (PAD), besides, ofcourse, Abhisit and the armed forces.

Of these anti-UDD forces, Abhisitand the military leaders are, as this iswritten, eager to win over the pro-de-mocracy and pro-Thaksin activiststhrough a charm offensive or two.However, the PAD, a group of elitistleaders and also pro-status quo activ-ists from various social strata, remainstotally opposed to the UDD.

Throughout March, the UDDleaders were mobilising support fromacross the country for street rallies inBangkok from time to time. The ob-jective was to keep Abhisit under sus-tained political pressure through a

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


mass movement. The protest venuesranged from the Government House inBangkok to the perimeter of a militaryfacility where Abhisit would retreat tofor a hassle-free ambience.

At one stage, the UDD even col-lected considerable quantities of blooddonated by the protesters andsplashed much of that at select venuesassociated with Abhisit’s movements.This unusual action, bizarre by inter-national standards, was explained as asocial practice of symbolic expressionof rivalry. As the UDD’s protest in-tensified in varied ways, Abhisit pro-claimed a state of emergency inBangkok and later in some provincesas well.

Two instances of serious violence,involving the UDD and the securityforces, broke out in April. In one case,the two sides clashed directly, whilethe UDD and its rivals in the civilianpolitical domain were said to have hada proximate engagement in the otherinstance. There were fatalities and in-juries, and a few soldiers, too, lost theirlives.

As a result, and at one stage prior tothe crackdown, the Army chief didsuggest that fresh general electionscould perhaps be considered as a wayof ending the UDD-catalysed politicalcrisis and civil unrest. Following such asignificant suggestion, Abhisit heldtwo sessions of televised talks withsome UDD leaders, who picked them-selves up for the dialogue. Those talksended in stalemates, and Abhisit re-fused to resume the dialogue althoughsome proactive Senators tried to bro-ker it even as the crackdown appearedimminent.

Regardless of this episode of faileddialogue, Abhisit made an election of-fer before deciding whether or not torequest the Army to quell the UDD’sseemingly interminable protest. He seta November 14 timeline for the elec-tion and suggested that he might dis-solve the existing House ofRepresentatives in the second half ofSeptember. The UDD promptly reject-ed the offer, viewing it as a politicalruse and insisting that the House bedissolved without any time-lag for a

quick round of general elections. Un-surprisingly, therefore, Abhisit lost notime to withdraw his offer.

Abhisit’s constant political refrain,during this entire crisis, is noteworthyfor the argument that time is needed toreform the present military-draftedConstitution. Such a reform is one ofthe UDD’s key demands, although it iswilling to settle for fresh elections un-der the present statute. Obviously, theUDD leaders hope, or even believe,that a new government, emergingfrom such a poll exercise, will makecommon cause with them and carryout constitutional reforms to keep thepolitical process free of undue militaryinfluence.

For Abhisit, though, his stormy po-litical equation with the UDD is not asimple matter of ideas about constitu-tional reforms and poll schedules. It isdifficult for him or anyone in his posi-tion to forget how he was humiliatedby the UDD in April last year, not longafter he became Prime Minister. UDDactivists, then simply known as RedShirts, prevented him from hosting theEast Asian regional summit. The pro-testers first gained access to the heavilyguarded conference venue by posing ascivilian service staff, concealing their

red shirts under their outer garments.As the Red Shirts swung into protestaction at the venue, without targetingthe assembled foreign dignitaries, Ab-hisit quickly called off the summit.Most foreign leaders, including an In-dian Minister deputising for the PrimeMinister, were evacuated by helicop-ter. Following the postponement of thesummit, the UDD intensified its pro-test for some more time. The militarywas called out to quell the protest.

The UDD’s protest movement wasfirst launched well over a year ago,shortly after Abhisit came to powerwith the backing of the military in aparliamentary vote for a change of gov-ernment. The preceding two govern-ments, which were toppled one afteranother through judicial pronounce-ments, were politically allied to Thak-sin. Both those governments wereformed on the basis of the results of“democracy-restoring” general elec-tions, which Thailand’s military coupmasters held over a year after they de-posed Thaksin in September 2006.

Those polls were, of course, con-ducted under the military-craftedConstitution, still in vogue as this iswritten. However, the UDD’s argu-ments against Abhisit flow from theperceived political difference betweenhis rise to power and the formation ofthe two pro-Thaksin governments.Abhisit, who did not win an outrightpopular mandate to govern in his ownright, is seen by the UDD protagonistsas the Thai military’s proxy. This im-pression, shared by some leaders andobservers outside Thailand in theSouth-East Asian region, is based onthe fact that he rose to power entirelyon the basis of parliamentary permu-tations and combinations.

This happened after the two pro-Thaksin governments were obliged tobow out of office for reasons unrelatedto their “political legitimacy” of com-manding clear governing majorities inthe House of Representatives. TheUDD has not tired of arguing that Ab-hisit owes his position to a military-engineered parliamentary coupagainst pro-Thaksin parliamentar-ians. �

FORMER PRIME MINISTER ThaksinShinawatra, who is in self-imposedexile.

AND

REW

YAT

ES/A

FP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


QUIET diplomacy often forms the substance ofinternational relations. Unsurprisingly, therefore,the recent dialogue between Japanese Defence Min-ister Toshimi Kitazawa and his Indian counterpartA.K. Antony is a potentially important pointer in theevolving geopolitics of the East Asian region.

Details of the Kitazawa-Antony talks in NewDelhi on April 30 were not released by either side atthat time. The meeting was not a secret event, ofcourse, and no hidden agenda need, therefore, beread into the failure of the two sides to make anyimmediate comment. However, the details, as laterascertained by this correspondent in Singapore, doreveal some new trends in the defence-related diplo-macy between the two countries.

More importantly, these new trends fit into anemerging pattern of India’s incremental dialoguewith China’s neighbours in East Asia – Japan, SouthKorea, and member-states of the Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Such scaled-updialogue need not necessarily be seen as an effort byIndia to try and “balance” out China. Nonetheless, itis becoming gradually evident that India is trying tomake its presence felt in China’s neighbourhood.And, in this, New Delhi has found willing partners.

Such a gradually emerging big picture of India inthe larger East Asian geopolitical region can only begleaned from some of the finer details of India’scurrent dialogue with Japan and with South Koreaon parallel tracks. Relevant to this context is theIndia-Republic of Korea Foreign Policy and Security

Dialogue in Seoul on April 9, apart from the Kitaza-wa-Antony talks.

This particular dialogue between India and Ja-pan is noteworthy on two counts: one, the new movefor an “exchange of information on the escortingschedules” of the Japanese and Indian naval vesselsengaged in their independent anti-piracy operationsalong the Gulf of Aden; and two, the manner inwhich Kitazawa took Antony into his confidenceover Japan’s views about China’s military activitiesin the area surrounding the Japanese archipelago.

There certainly was nothing amiss about suchdiscussions. However, the key diplomatic point tonote is that China has been placed on the agenda ofJapan-India dialogue on defence cooperation. Thisdoes not, of course, signal any kind of military coor-dination by Tokyo and New Delhi in their independ-ent interactions with Beijing. What cannot, however,escape notice is the fact that the Japan-India defenceministerial dialogue, a crucial aspect of a relevantAction Plan, has now acquired a new dimensionbeyond the obvious bilateral one. China has been

Quiet approachIndia and Japan engage in defence-related diplomacy to tone up the overall

dynamics of their bilateral engagement. B Y P . S . S U R Y A N A R A Y A N A IN SINGAPORE

The New Delhi meeting is significantfor the manner in which theJapanese Defence Minister took hisIndian counterpart into hisconfidence over his country’s viewsabout China’s military activities around the archipelago.

A.K. ANTONY, Defence Minister, with ToshimiKitazawa, his Japanese counterpart, before theirmeeting in New Delhi on April 30.

PRAK

ASH

SIN

GH

/AFP

World Affairs

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


recognised as a potential factor in theevolving Japan-India engagement.

Interesting indeed is Kitazawa’sdiscourse on China’s naval activities inthe area surrounding Japan in Apriland thereabouts. Antony was in-formed of Tokyo’s perceptions on howChina’s military helicopter(s) carriedout “proximate” flights in the vicinityof Japanese escort ships. And, Kitaza-wa is believed to have pointed out howJapan recognised the importance of“engaging China to take responsibleactions as well as to comply with allinternational laws and regulations”.

Also emphasised was Tokyo’s viewthat Beijing should display greater“transparency” than now on all mat-ters relating to China’s military mod-ernisation and defence posture. It isunderstood that Antony conveyed tohis Japanese counterpart somethoughts on India’s ongoing interac-tions with China in the defence sector.This was done with reference to theevolving political framework of India’sdialogue with China across a widespectrum of common and differentialinterests.

About a week after the Kitazawa-Antony dialogue, but unrelated to it,the Japanese government lodged aprotest with China over its perceivedmilitary activities in the seas sur-rounding Japan. Of no direct rele-vance to the future of the Japan-Indiadefence dialogue were Beijing’sthoughts on Tokyo’s unusual diplo-matic action of this kind.

The emerging China factor apart,Tokyo is clearly seeking to move closerto New Delhi in the defence domain ina manner consistent with Japan’s post-imperial military doctrine of pacifism.Military experts say that the latestmove for “exchange of information onthe [independent] escorting sched-ules” of the Japanese and Indian navalvessels, now engaged in anti-piracyoperations in the Gulf of Aden sector,reflects a deepening of trust betweenthese two navies. The Japanese navy,or more precisely the Maritime Self-Defence Force to call it by its pacifistname, is generally seen to be wary ofsuch coordination, except perhaps

with Washington, Tokyo’s long-stand-ing military ally despite all the currentturbulence in their ties.

Antony and Kitazawa have alsoagreed that India and Japan shouldhold a naval exercise by 2011. The twocountries have already held trilateralnaval exercises, of the sophisticated

kind, involving the United States aswell. At least two such trilateral exer-cises have taken place off Japan, notfar from the Chinese maritime do-main. In addition, India and Japanteamed up with the U.S. and Australia,besides Singapore, for a multilateralnaval exercise in 2007. Another talk-

THE JAPAN MARITIME Self-Defence Force destroyer J.S. Yuudachi leadinga formation during Exercise Malabar 2007 in the Bay of Bengal. More than20,000 naval personnel from the navies of Australia, India, Japan, theRepublic of Singapore, and the United States took part in the exercise.

U.S

. NAV

Y/AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


ing point during the Kitazawa-Antonymeeting was the idea of joint training,involving the Japanese and Indian na-vies, for humanitarian assistance, di-saster relief and U.N. peacekeepingoperations.

These and other aspects of the Ja-pan-India defence ministerial dia-logue do not really signify analtogether new political direction inthe overall bilateral domain. In fact, adefence-cooperation-related ActionPlan was already agreed upon duringJapanese Prime Minister Yukio Ha-toyama’s visit to New Delhi for talkswith his Indian counterpart, Manmo-han Singh, early in January. Despitethis diplomatic caveat, the new realityis that the defence-related Action Planis being actively implemented, that toowith reference to the emerging politi-cal dynamics in East Asia. These dy-namics can be traced primarily to therelentless rise of China as a potentialsuperpower.

Another aspect of these dynamicsis that Hatoyama has so far failed tomaster the diplomatic equivalent ofrocket science in his efforts to deflectJapan off its “geosynchronous” orbitalpath around the U.S. in global affairs.However, he has not completely givenup his efforts to bring about some bal-ance, if not total “equality”, betweenthe U.S. and Japan in their 60-year-old military alliance.

Not to be underestimated in thisbroader context is the political impor-tance of the new references to China inthe Japan-India defence ministerialdialogue. More significantly, India andJapan are engaged in a politically cali-brated exercise to tone up the overalldynamics of their bilateralengagement.

Antony and Kitazawa may nothave directly dealt with the idea oftranslating into reality the “2+2 Dia-logue” formula, which Hatoyama andManmohan Singh agreed upon inearly January. The idea was, of course,in the air even earlier. The formula,with its arithmetical architecture, isvery simple indeed: the Defence andForeign Ministers of Japan, arrayed onits side as “2”, will hold periodic talks

with the Defence and External AffairsMinisters of India, arrayed on its sideas the other “2”.

Such a “2+2 Dialogue” between anytwo countries is considered to be thediplomatic index of a truly special ornear-special relationship betweenthem.

2 + 2 D I A L O G U EAsked about the fate of the Japan-In-dia “2+2 Dialogue” formula, withoutreference to the recent Kitazawa-An-tony meeting, Kazuo Kodama, a topJapanese official, told this correspond-ent that “the idea is active, not dor-mant”. The two countries have alreadyagreed to begin such a process at thesub-Cabinet level or at the level of se-nior officials.

Japan regularly holds “2+2 Dia-logue” with the U.S. and Australia.These talks, at the ministerial level ineach case, are held on altogether dif-ferent political tracks. While Japandoes not look upon India as being inthe same category of partners at thisstage, significant in itself is the realitythat Tokyo and New Delhi are seekingsuch a format of dialogue.

In a different but related sphere,India figures alongside Australia in Ja-pan’s calculus of security cooperation.Tokyo already has somewhat similarsecurity-related agreements, basicallydeclarations, with both Canberra andNew Delhi. These do not, obviously,measure up as the equivalents of theU.S.-Japan military alliance. Howev-er, the Kitazawa-Antony dialogueshows that Tokyo and New Delhi aregravitating towards each other almostthe same way in which Japan and Aus-tralia have. This, surely, is the percep-tion on the Japanese side, while thepolitical spin in the Indian officialdomis not very clear.

In a sense, the political label of a“strategic partnership” between anytwo countries, with or without the so-called add-on of a global dimension insuch a “partnership”, is now in somekind of “inflationary use” (in the wordsof a north-east Asian diplomat).

However, it is the emptiness ofsuch an “inflationary use” that India

and South Korea are now seeking toavoid in their escalating engagementin the diplomatic domain. India’s Sec-retary (East), Latha Reddy, and herSouth Korean counterparts recentlyheld the first-ever meeting in the up-graded category of foreign policy andsecurity dialogue.

The meeting in Seoul covered is-sues of trade, with particular referenceto the India-South Korea Comprehen-sive Economic Partnership Agreementthat came into effect in January, be-sides the conventional aspects of secu-rity-related engagement.

Political ties between New Delhiand Seoul have been warming up inthe context of South Korean PresidentLee Myung-bak’s travel to India as itsRepublic Day guest this year. In partic-ular, Seoul has been evincing consid-erable interest in promoting ties withIndia in the civil nuclear sector. And,interestingly, the South Korean Minis-try of Education, Science and Tech-nology presented, in April, a citation toa senior Indian diplomat, C. Rajasek-har, for his role in the promotion ofcooperation between the two countriesin the atomic energy sector.

On yet another political track inthe Asia-Pacific region, India figuresin the new efforts of ASEAN to create anew forum of ASEAN+8 nations. Thiswill consist of all the 10 ASEAN mem-ber-states, plus China, Japan, SouthKorea, India, Australia, New Zealand,the U.S. and Russia. It is in this contextthat the regular talks between NewDelhi and ASEAN, coordinated on theIndian side by Latha Reddy and Am-bassador Biren Nanda, among others,acquire a new sense of urgency.

The ASEAN+8 forum, not yet giv-en a formal name, is significant for theinclusion of not only the U.S. but alsoRussia as key players of the geopolit-ical East Asian region. In a recent con-versation with this correspondent,former ASEAN Secretary-General Ro-dolfo C. Severino emphasised the newimportance of Russia, already a keyplayer in the multilateral talks on Ko-rean denuclearisation, besides themore conventional relevance of theU.S., to East Asia. �


J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

Cup that cheers?South Africa has great hopes on the World Cup, but it is Europe that continues to

call the shots. B Y D A V I D R U N C I M A N

World Affairs/South Africa

THE arrival of the World Cup in Afri-ca, the world’s poorest continent, is clearlyan event of deep symbolism. But symbolicof what? For Thabo Mbeki, who as SouthAfrican President was at the forefront ofthe bid to host the tournament, this is themoment when Africa finally arrives on theglobal stage. In African Soccerscapes: Howa Continent Changed the World’s Game (Ohio Uni-versity Press), one of a number of books celebrating“Africa’s” World Cup, Peter Alegi quotes the letterMbeki sent to FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, settingout his country’s ambitions: “We want, on behalf ofour continent, to stage an event that will send ripplesof confidence from the Cape to Cairo…. We want toensure that one day historians will reflect upon the2010 World Cup as a moment when Africa stood talland resolutely turned the tide on centuries of povertyand conflict.”

Even by the standards of the hyperbolic guff thatsurrounds major sports events, this is setting the barpretty high. In reality, sports tournaments rarely domuch to transform the fortunes of the countries thathost them – at least not for the better – let alonechange the fate of whole continents. But they can tellus a lot about where power really lies. What the 2010World Cup clearly shows is that Africa is now aserious player in the world of football. This repre-sents a remarkable turnaround in a relatively shortperiod of time. Africa had no real presence at theWorld Cup until 1974, when Zaire (now the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo) became the first blackAfrican team to take part in the finals in the then

West Germany. (South Africa had planned to sendan all-black team to Mexico in 1970, but that wasvetoed on the same grounds as the plan to send anall-white team to England in 1966.)

Zaire lost all three of its games, scoring no goalsand conceding 14. In Brian Glanville’s The Story ofthe World Cup (Faber & Faber), now in its fifthedition for 2010, Zaire barely gets a mention, apartfrom Glanville noting that Scotland should havebeaten it by more than 2-0, but the Scots wilted inthe heat. Yet the African team’s real mark on the

tournament was made during its matchagainst Brazil, when the Zairean defenderMwepu Ilunga ran out of a defensive wallat the sound of the referee’s whistle to bootaway the ball that had been placed for aBrazil free kick while the opposing playerslooked on with a mixture of amusementand horror.

This became a defining moment forthat long-standing cliche of Western football com-mentary: the charming “naivety” of African football.The players were assumed to be skilful, but hope-lessly ill-disciplined and childish. It was subsequent-ly rumoured that Ilunga might have panickedbecause the Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko hadwarned the team that if it lost to Brazil by 4-0 orworse he could not guarantee the players personalsafety (it was 3-0 at the time). Naivety, it was as-sumed, went along with deep and sometimes terrify-ing political consequences. These lazy assumptionspersisted through the 1980s and the 1990s, even asAfrican teams started to win games and to suggestthat they might one day even win the tournament.

In 1990, Cameroon came within a few minutes ofknocking England out at the quarter-final stage be-fore losing to two late penalties. David Goldblatt,whose superb The Ball Is Round: A Global History ofSoccer (Viking) remains the one indispensable guideto global football, simply records that “in Cup foot-ball the better team does not necessarily win…. Cam-eroon were still the better team”. But for the Britishpundit Ron Atkinson, commentating on television atthe time, the match confirmed that African teamswere always likely to fall short at the highest level for

European countries, whose realeconomies are tottering, sustain vastfootball economies which fuel theplanet’s appetite for the sport. Africais now a part of this money machinebut has little control over it.


J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

all the traditional reasons – too excit-able, not enough discipline. Lovely fel-las, though. No one in their right mindwould now dare to patronise Africanfootball or footballers, who includesome of the best players to be seenanywhere (Didier Drogba, SamuelEto’o, Michael Essien). On planet foot-ball, Africa has become a force to bereckoned with, and South Africa 2010is the ultimate symbol of this changingorder.

In this year’s World Cup finals,there will be six African teams takingpart – Algeria, Cameroon, Coted’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Ghana, Nigeriaand the hosts, South Africa – but therest of the world’s rising powers willalmost all be absent. There is no China,who somewhat surprisingly failed toqualify, and no India, who as usual didnot even come close. Indeed, of theBRIC countries, only Brazil will bethere (Brazil is always there); Russiaalso missed out, in a play-off to little

Slovenia. But nor will there be teamsfrom many other of the world’s mostpopulous nations: no Indonesia, noPhilippines, no Pakistan, no Bangla-desh, no Vietnam, no Iran, no Iraq. Ifyou add them all up, that’s over half theworld’s population who will have to besupporting someone else’s nationalteam.

Yet it is China’s absence that is re-ally noteworthy. This is an Africantournament taking place without thecontinent’s dominating force. Ironi-cally, China had a much bigger pres-ence at the Africa Cup of Nations,which took place in Angola earlier thisyear, than it will have at the WorldCup. In Angola, it was the Chinese whoprovided the infrastructure (includingbuilding four new stadiums) in returnfor the usual raft of trade and mineralconcessions. That probably offers abetter glimpse of the future for the restof the continent than anything thathappens in South Africa this summer.

By contrast, FIFA’s showpiece stillconjures up a vanished world in whichEurope is at the heart of everything.This is not just because half of all theteams taking part are European. It isalso because many of the leading SouthAmerican players, and almost all theleading African ones, play in Europe.The fact is that the decaying powers ofEurope remain the driving force be-hind the global game. Countries whosereal economies are tottering – Spain,Italy, England – still sustain vast,bloated football economies that fuelthe planet’s appetite for the sport. Afri-ca is now a part of this money machinebut has little or no control over it. As aresult, this is a tournament shaped by,and for, the interests of the Europeanelite. Having it in Africa means it is inthe right time zone for European tele-vision audiences. Having it in SouthAfrica means that it has also got theright climate for European teams tothrive. Africa’s first World Cup will al-

SOCCER CITY STADIUM in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the opening and final matches of the 2010 World Cupin football will be played.

AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


so be the coldest on record – a genuinewinter tournament for the wintergame.

Normally, home advantage, or atleast continental advantage, is decisivein World Cup finals: Brazil is the onlycountry ever to have won the tourna-ment outside of its home continent (inSweden in 1958 and South Korea in2002). Therefore, this should be Afri-ca’s moment, not just to host it but towin it. But that seems unlikely. Coted’Ivoire is currently the most fanciedteam according to bookmakers. Butahead of it is Portugal, France, Italy,Holland, Germany, Argentina, En-gland, Brazil and Spain. Everything isbeing done to ensure that these teamsfeel at home.

However, the real obstacle toSouth Africa’s delivering on home ad-vantage is the state of South Africanfootball itself. Were the tournament

being held in, say, Nigeria, it is easy toimagine the home side romping to vic-tory on a wave of local support andwith the help of local conditions, as thebetter-fancied sides wilted in theiralienating surroundings. But thosesurroundings are one of the reasonswhy FIFA would never dream of hold-ing a World Cup in Nigeria.

South Africa will have passionatelocal support, but the comfortable set-ting means that the national teamneeds to be good to take advantage.Unfortunately, the team is not verygood at all. Bookmakers rank Uru-guay, Denmark and Serbia as morelikely to win than the home nation.Instead, they risk becoming the firsthome side ever to fail to make it out ofthe group stages.

Why has the hosting of the WorldCup not done more to galvanise SouthAfrican football? The answer, which is

touched on by Steve Bloomfield in hisentertaining travelogue Africa United:How Football Explains Africa (Canon-gate Books), says a lot about why thetransformative dreams of Thabo Mbe-ki are not likely to come true. Duringthe apartheid years in South Africa,football was treated as a “black” sport(though many whites played), in con-trast to the exclusively “white” sports ofcricket and rugby. That meant it wasstarved of resources, but it also meantthat it had a great deal of autonomybecause the South African governmentwas happy to let it organise itself. It isthe autonomy that has subsequentlybeen the problem. The South AfricanFootball Association (SAFA) got usedto treating itself as a state within astate. “It’s jobs for life at SAFA,”Bloomfield is told. “There is no ac-countability – it’s nonexistent.” Theprospect of hosting the World Cup hasnot sorted this problem out. It has justmade it worse.

The great hope behind holding bigsporting events in developing coun-tries is that the glare of internationalpublicity will drive the process of re-form. But it does not work like thatbecause the incentive structure is allwrong. Everyone knows that only twothings are certain: first, there will beplenty of money washing around, andsecond, everything will have to be fin-ished on time, come what may. Sorather than reform, the local organis-ers hold out for short-term injectionsof funds, often to bail them out of crisesof their own making. The AthensOlympics of 2004, which may in thelong run have helped bring the globalfinancial system to its knees, is the rolemodel here. Greece’s economy was notbankrupted by the cost of hosting theGames. But Greece’s promises to re-form its way of doing business, to meetthe criteria of euro membership, hadto be put on hold in the desperate rushto get the facilities built on time.

The 2010 World Cup is unlikely toshake global capitalism to its founda-tions, but it is following a familiar pat-tern. Very recently FIFA injected anemergency $100 million into SAFA, toensure that training facilities are ready

GHANAIAN MIDFIELDER MICHAEL Essien, who played for Chelsea,clashing with Portugese midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo, who played forManchester United, during a match in Moscow in May 2008.

ADR

IAN

DEN

NIS

/AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


on time. The stadiums are magnifi-cent, but as Peter Alegi shows, most ofthe employment generated to buildthem has been short-term contract la-bour. There is little evidence of whattheir lasting legacy will be: so far theevent has generated $3.3 billion in rev-enue for FIFA, but all that it has pro-duced for grass-roots football in SouthAfrica is 27 artificial pitches. The stadi-ums themselves will probably have torevert to rugby or cricket to pay theirway. A lot of people are going to be-come very rich as a result of the tourna-ment. But once it is over, it is going tobe hard for most South Africans toknow where all the money has gone.

In Why England Lose: And OtherCurious Football Phenomena Ex-plained (HarperSport), Simon Kuperand Stefan Szymanski describe whybig sports tournaments rarely give thehost country the economic boost theorganisers always promise – all thoseextra tourist dollars and investmentbenefits simply do not materialise.What these events do achieve is ashort-term boost in national happi-ness – for a few months, people arecheered up by having something todistract them. Is that what South Afri-

ca needs? “About a third of all SouthAfricans live on less than $2 per day,”Kuper and Szymanski note dryly.“These people need houses, electricity,holidays, doctors.”

Yet the perennial problems ofspreading the wealth of vastly lucrativesporting events do not, by themselves,explain why South Africa has not got abetter national team. In 1996, in thefirst flush of the post-apartheid era, thecountry hosted and won the Africa Cupof Nations, which seemed to promiseglory days ahead. The game began toprosper at the local level. But the prob-lem is that South African football pros-pered too much at the local level, atleast relative to the rest of the conti-nent. It now represents one possiblemodel of football development: thecorporate model, where home-spon-sored teams support a functioningleague system and home-grown play-ers have an opportunity to make a liv-ing in their own country. The majorityof the South African squad play in theirown Premier League, for teams such asKaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sun-downs. The league is competitive butalso almost certainly corrupt – therewas a major match-fixing scandal in

2004, which led to plenty of arrests butvery few convictions. It has producedalmost no internationally recognisedplayers.

South Africa now has a goodenough league system to maintain thenational game but not a good enoughone to improve it. The other model isthe one that holds in the rest of Africa,including in more successful football-ing nations such as Cote d’Ivoire andGhana. This is the raw free-marketsystem of human trafficking, whereentrepreneurs set up football acade-mies to train up young African playersand then trade them on to clubs inEurope.

As Bloomfield describes, there arenow hundreds of these academies scat-tered across Africa, and governmentsin weak or failing states often welcometheir presence since they offer facilitiesand opportunities that the statesthemselves can no longer provide.They also offer players the prospect ofserious riches if they can find their wayto the top European sides. This is theroute that most members of the Gha-naian and Ivorian national teams havetaken. Both squads consist of playerswho play almost exclusively in Europe.

ALB

ERTO

PIZ

ZOLI

/AFP

STRIKER DIDIER DROGBA of Cote d’Ivoire (centre) duels for the ball with Malawi team captain Peter Mponda duringtheir World Cup qualifying match in March 2009 in Abidjan. (Right) Cameroonian forward Samuel Eto’o, who plays forthe Italian club Inter Milan, during a match in Rome in May 2010.

ISSO

UF

SAN

OG

O/A

FP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


The superstars – Drogba, Essien, theToure brothers, Kolo and Yaya – makevery considerable fortunes by Europe-an standards, and unimaginably vastones by African standards.

The fruits of this system will be ondisplay at the World Cup but so will itspitfalls. The best African teams have tobe put together from players who arescattered more or less at randomacross Europe and often have few linksback home. Some places get lucky andproduce a small nexus of superstars:this is often because the arrival of oneoutstanding player breeds interestfrom agents sniffing around for thenext big thing.

But success also breeds greed andcorruption and leads the caravan tomove on to look for untapped (andcheaper) sources of talent. Almostnothing gets put back into the infras-tructure of the African game, so nocountry can plan for the future. Ghanacould win this World Cup if the teamhad any halfway decent strikers, butGhana has become known for its mid-fielders, so that is what the system hasproduced. African countries have tomake do with what the rich worldwants to extract from them.

There is another side to this systemthat will not be on display in SouthAfrica. The vast majority of Africanplayers do not end up as superstars atChelsea or Barcelona. They arrive infar-flung corners of Europe and then

move around, traded for small sums bycash-strapped clubs looking for value.They are what Alegi, in African Soc-cerscapes, calls the lumpen proletariatof professional football, with fewrights, fewer privileges and no securi-ty. Many arrive very young (in 2003the average age of African imports toEuropean leagues was 19 comparedwith 24.5 for imports from elsewherein Europe) and wind up in deeply un-familiar places where racism is still rifeand the climate is often uncongenial.African footballers now make up themajority of professionals in Romania,and more than a third in countriessuch as Switzerland and Ukraine. In2006, over a fifth of all transfers be-tween European clubs were of Africanplayers.

Cheap African labour is now thestaple diet of the lower reaches of theEuropean game. Some of the more re-sponsible clubs have tried to buck thistrend. Ajax of Amsterdam has set up afeeder club in South Africa to try toproduce players for its own first teamin a more responsible and less exploi-tative way. But so far it does not appearto have worked – the general mediocri-ty of the South African league seems tobe holding it back.

Instead, the more exploitative sys-tem practised elsewhere on the conti-nent suits the trend in world football,which is towards an ever greater focuson the tiny elite of superstars and su-

per-rich clubs at the expense of therest. Football is an increasingly indi-vidualistic game, in which clubs canmake vast sums out of the image rightsand merchandising of their best-known players (it is said that the Por-tugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo hasalready earned back the £80 millionReal Madrid paid Manchester Unitedfor him in just this way). Africa offersthe possibility of finding such stars fornext to nothing. It is treated as a poten-tial gold mine, which suggests that notmuch has changed after all.

All this is hard to square with Mbe-ki’s hopes for a South African WorldCup. FIFA is determined to put on agood show, and the expectation is thatwe will see the best of Africa, or at leastFIFA’s definition of it: an efficient,well-organised event that need fright-en none of the sponsors or merchan-disers or money-men for whom thegame now exists.

The facilities will be ready on time,the contractors will have been paid off,the corruption will have been sweptunder the carpet. There will be plentyof local colour and no doubt lots ofattractive football. New superstars willbe born, some of them African, maybeeven some of them South African,whom the European clubs will snap uponce the tournament is over. Therewill be a vast audience in Asia for thematches, among fans whose interest isnot in any particular country but inseeing the stars of the Europeanleagues, the Ronaldos, the Rooneys,the Drogbas.

In the African countries that have achance of doing well in the tourna-ment, there will be huge excitementand scenes of euphoria, which FIFAand the world’s media will milk for allthey are worth. Then, when it is over,FIFA will feel it has done its bit forAfrica. No one will be left in any doubtthat the world now takes African foot-ball seriously. But the real power lieselsewhere. On the rotation policy, thetournament is due to come back to thecontinent in 2026. But there is alreadytalk that by then India will be ready tomake a bid. �© Guardian News & Media 2010

NTS

WE

MO

KO

ENA/

AFP

PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA handing out flags in Soweto on May 21 to drumup support for Bafana Bafana, the country’s national football team. SouthAfrica will host the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches, which will be played fromJune 11 to July 11.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


updateTHE figures released by the Feder-

al Statistics Office have prompted con-cern over whether Germany is doingenough to support families. Last year,651,000 babies were born in Germany,30,000 fewer than the previous year.

With only 8.2 children being bornfor every 1,000 citizens (comparedwith 9.3 in 2000), and with 10 in 1,000citizens dying every year, Germany isnowhere near approaching a replace-ment rate that would keep the pop-ulation stable.

“Germany is Shrinking!” read theheadline in Der Tagesspiegel newspa-per when the statistics were released inMay, prompting alarmed reactions.Apart from a minimal spike in thebirth rate in 2007, following the in-troduction of a parental benefits sys-tem, the number of births has more orless been constantly dropping sincethe 1970s.

On a European scale, Germany hasthe lowest birth rate, and on a globalscale it is almost as bad. Of 27 coun-tries with populations in excess of 40million, Germany ranks second frombottom in terms of children under 15as a percentage of the overall popula-tion. Japan is at the bottom with 13 percent, followed by Germany with 13.6per cent, and Italy with 14 per cent. At45 per cent, Ethiopia has the highestportion of youth population.

Politicians have long been forcedto improve the birth rate or face theproblem of Germany having insuffi-cient workers and taxpayers to supporta population which, like much of Eu-rope, is ageing faster than at any timein history. The statistics have disap-pointed many observers who thoughtthat the government policy to supportthe family, which includes more than150 billion euros a year pumped intofamily benefits, child welfare pay-ments and parental wage compensa-tion, would have had a positive effecton the birth rate.

Family Minister Kerstin Schrodersaid the reason for the failure to boostnumbers was a drop in the number ofwomen of child-bearing age. “Thebirth rate is so low because there arefewer and fewer women,” KerstinSchroder said. But she also admittedthat having children “required havinga lot of courage” and that at the time ofthe deepest economic crisis since theWar many Germans feel “fearful andfull of angst about their jobs, and forthat reason decide against having achild”.

Another explanation she suggestedwas that “some women simply fail tofind the right husband”.

But experts say that Germany hasignored the problem for too long, erro-neously adopting the adage of thepost-War Chancellor Konrad Ade-nauer, who famously said: “People willalways have children, whatever.”

S Y S T E M I C F A I L U R EAccording to Katya Tichomirowa, aspecialist in family policy, France andScandinavia, which have higher birthrates, contradicted the idea that a low

rate was natural in industrialised so-cieties. She blamed instead a systemicfailure to see each in a couple as equal.“Nowhere in Europe is the tax systemgeared so much in favour of the familymodel of single-breadwinning fatherand stay-at-home wife as it is [in Ger-many]... the state should be support-ing the career development of bothparents, enabling both to take part inchild care,” she wrote in BerlinerZeitung.

But the issue remains particularlysensitive in a country that turnedchild-bearing into an act of patriotismduring the Nazi era, with womenurged to concentrate on Kinder,Kuche, Kirche – children, kitchen andchurch – and awarded medals basedon how many children they had.

“There are still many who supportthis ideal of ‘children, kitchen andchurch’, which certainly puts somewomen off,” said Silke Schmidt, anacademic in Berlin. But she admittedthat many of the props that would helpfamilies have children in a modernworld were pitifully lacking. “Oftenschools finish so early it’s impossible toget a part-time job, employers are reg-ularly unsympathetic towards moth-ers, and childcare facilities are poor,”she said. But neither is the phenom-enon of Rabenmutter particularlyhelpful: “raven mothers” is the deroga-tory term for women who combinework and family. The fears over Ger-many’s demographic woes have onlydeepened following recent warningsthat large budget cuts are imminent inorder to balance the budget.

Roland Koch, Prime Minister ofthe State of Hesse and a member ofAngela Merkel’s government, is lead-ing conservative calls for a cut in familyspending, including scrapping theguarantee of childcare facilities forchildren under the age of three, whichexperts say would quash any chance ofraising the birth rate.By Kate Connolly in Berlin© Guardian News & Media 2010

Ageing Germany

VOLK

ER H

ARTM

ANN

/AFP

IN LUEDINGHAUSEN, WESTERNGermany, children take a bite ofstrawberries as the crop seasonarrives. In the country, only 8.2children are born for every 1,000citizens, while 10 in 1,000 citizens dieevery year.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


“WE are standing on the outer fortification,” an-nounced Ravindra Singh Bisht to L.S. Rao, his juniorcolleague in the Archaeological Survey of India(ASI), as they went around a mound at the Harappansite of Dholavira situated at Bhachau taluk in Guj-arat’s Kutch district on the island of Khadir. Theisland is surrounded by the vast emptiness of theGreat Rann of Kutch.

That was in the 1980s and Professor Bisht hadenough reason to be excited. “When we dug, Ishowed Mr Rao the bricks used in the fortification,”he recalled on April 29, 2010, some 20 years later.“Today, I am very happy that whatever I visualised, Ihave duly realised by the excavations,” said Bisht, ashe sat in his office at Purana Quila in New Delhi,surrounded by trunks full of artefacts excavated atDholavira.

Bisht, a scholar in Sanskrit, led 13 field excava-tions at the Harappan site from 1990 to 2005. Heheld various posts in the ASI, including those ofSuperintending Archaeologist (Excavation branch5) at Vadodara and Director of the Institute of Ar-chaeology in New Delhi. He also served as Director(Excavations), ASI, New Delhi, before retiring in2004 as the ASI’s Joint Director General.

It was in the mid-1960s that Jagat Pati Joshi,who went on to become the ASI’s Director General,discovered Dholavira, which lies between two sea-sonal channels, the Manhar to the south and theMansar to the north. The site is a five-hour drivefrom Bhuj town. The nearest town from Dholavira isRopar, 100 km away.

In the 13 seasons of field excavations, Dholavira

The rise and fall of a The city is characterised bymonumental architecture, massivefortifications, elaborate watermanagement and town planning ofa unique kind. It rose, reached itszenith and then decayed and died, inseven distinct stages.

Dholavira, now identified as one of the five largest Harappan sites, tells the story of a

The layout of theexcavated cityconsisted of a citadelwhich can be dividedinto a “castle” and “abailey”, a middletown, a lower town,two stadia, an annexeand a series ofreservoirs. All ofthese were set withinan enormousfortification wallrunning on all four sides.

Archaeology

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Harappan citycivilisation that flourished across India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. B Y T . S . S U B R A M A N I A N

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


has been revealed to be one of the fivelargest among the 700 Harappan(popularly known as Indus Valley) civ-ilisation sites covering 1 million sq kmin India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.The other four sites are Harappa, Mo-henjo-daro and Ganeriwala, all in Pa-kistan, and Rakhigarhi in Haryana.

While Dholavira’s fortified Harap-pan city was built on 49 hectares, itsremains have been found over an areaof about 100 hectares. Its story com-mences in the beginning of 3000 BCE(Before Common Era) and endsaround 1500 BCE.

“Dholavira adds a new dimensionto the personality of the Indus civil-isation,” says Bisht. In the Indus civ-ilisation map of several hundred sites,Dholavira has an important place onseveral counts. They include (1) itslong cultural sequence, documentingthe rise and fall of the Indus civilisa-tion over a period of 1,500 years; (2) itsmeticulous urban planning withmathematical precision; (3) its monu-mental architecture; (4) its huge stadi-um with terraced stands, which couldhave been used for manifold purposessuch as organising sports, communitygatherings or a market; (5) the unique-ness of its funerary/sepulchral archi-tecture; (6) the discovery of asandstone quarry from where sand-stone was excavated, converted intohuge architectural members and evenexported to sites such as Harappa andMohenjo-daro, several hundred kilo-metres away; and, above all, (7) itsamazing water management systemwith a series of reservoirs built aroundthe built-up portions of the city butvery much within the city’s fortifica-tion wall.

“Dholavira is characterised bymonumental architecture, massivefortifications, the use of dressedstones, elaborate water management,and meticulous town-planning of aunique kind,” says Michel Danino, in-dependent researcher on the Harap-pan civilisation. It also enjoys thedistinction of yielding the longest In-dus inscription, running to a length ofthree metres and comprising 10 large-sized Indus signs. No less significant is A HABITATIONAL SITE, running in cardinal directions, at the excavated city.

CO

UR

TESY

ASI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


MIC

HEL

DAN

INO

AN UNDERGROUND DRAIN. It was more than1.3 metres deep and about one metre wide.Dholavira has yielded pipes made of terracottaand stone to let out water from residentialquarters. According to Bisht, the "citadel"yielded an intricate network of stormwaterdrains "to let out water during the rainy season.This network was connected to an arterial oneand it boasted slopes, steps, cascades,warholes, paved flooring and capstones." C

OU

RTE

SY A

SI

RAVINDRA SINGH BISHT , former JointDirector General of the Archaeological Surveyof India, explaining the four-sign inscription onsandstone discovered at Dholavira.

V.V.

KR

ISH

NAN

THE ROCK-CUT RESERVOIR discovered on thesouthern side during the excavations.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


the discovery of a large piece of naturalsandstone engraved with four big In-dus signs. These discoveries are in ad-dition to a large number of seals andtablets with Indus signs that Dholavirahas yielded.

T O W N P L A N N I N GDholavira’s elaborate town planningwas based on the conscious use of spe-cific proportions for various enclo-sures. Says Bisht: “The city ofDholavira in its fullest form was a pre-cisely proportionate whole and a pro-portionately resolved configuration,which followed a resolute set of princi-ples of planning and architecture withmathematical precision and perhapswith astronomically established orien-tation.” For instance, the city was711.10 metres long and 616.87 metreswide, the length to width ratio being5:4. The castle internal was 114 metreslong and 92 metres wide, maintainingthe same ratio, and the castle externalwas 151 metres long and 118 metreswide, the ratio again being 5:4.

Danino, who has done research onthe Harappan metrology at Dholavira,said the question of units of lengthused in the Harappan civilisation hadnever been solved satisfactorily. Ac-cording to him, while studying Dhola-vira’s plan – a city where,exceptionally, the intricate layout ofthe fortifications is largely intact – itoccurred to him that it might offer asimple way to calculate the unit oflength used by the city’s architects andbuilders.

Danino said that using the specificproportions Bisht mentioned and thecity’s actual dimensions, he had calcu-

THE INSCRIPTION ON wood (above),with 10 signs, is the longest Indusinscription discovered so far at anyIndus site in the subcontinent. Theboard itself is three metres long.Bisht surmised that it must havebeen erected above the northerngate (below) of the citadel. Since theletters were made of baked gypsumit must have been visible from themiddle town and lower town, headded. (Story on page 68.)

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


MIC

HEL

DAN

INO

CO

UR

TESY

ASI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


lated that the unit in terms of whichmost of these dimensions took a sim-ple expression – that too with a verylow margin of error – was close to 1.9metres.

He added: “Applying this unit toDholavira’s enormous reservoirs andto major structures at other Harappansites, including Mohenjo-daro andHarappa, has yielded promising re-sults. I have also proposed that a small-er unit of 1.76 cm, similar to the angula(the traditional Indian digit), was atthe root of the whole system. Furtherresearch is under way to validate it.”

C U L T U R A L S E Q U E N C EThe most important discovery madefrom the Dholavira excavation is thelong cultural sequence of a gradualrise, culmination and fall of the urbansystem of the Harappan civilisation, inseven stages. Says Bisht: “It means wefound the nascent, childhood, adoles-cent, ageing and finally the de-urban-isation stages of the Indus civilisationthere. That is why I call it the rise andfall of the Indus civilisation. This hasbeen found elsewhere too but the se-quence in its entirety is found at Dho-lavira, in the stratified debris in thecastle, which witnessed the vicissi-tudes spread over 1,500 years.”

The layout of the excavated city atDholavira consisted of a citadel, whichcan be divided into a “castle” and “abailey”, a middle town, a lower town,two stadia, an annexe and a series ofreservoirs. All of these were set withinan enormous fortification wall run-ning on all four sides. The castle andthe bailey together made the citadel.“The city was perhaps configured like alarge parallelogram, boldly outlined bymassive walls, with its longer axis be-ing from east to west,” Bisht said.

The castle and the bailey werestrongly fortified. The castle wasguarded by impregnable defences andit had massive gates and impressivetowers. The excavation has so far ex-posed 17 gates, all built in the fortifica-tion wall. While people in authoritylived in the castle, artisans and crafts-men lived in the middle town and thelower town. The annexe was meant for

AMONG the fabulously large body ofartefacts unearthed at Dholavira twoIndus inscriptions, one on wood andthe other on stone, stand out. Theinscription on wood, with 10 signs, isspectacularly large and is the longestinscription discovered so far at anyIndus site in the Indian subcontinent.Each is 35 cm to 37 cm tall and 25 cmto 27 cm broad. The 10 signs constitu-te a work of great craftsmanship.Each sign is made of several pieces,which have been inlaid on a woodenboard.

The signboard must have beenplaced above the north gate of thecitadel that existed at the Harappancity of Dholavira. All the signs aremade of thoroughly baked gypsumand their white brilliance must havemade the board visible from afar.

The other inscription is on nat-ural, limy sandstone and has four bigsigns engraved on it. While ProfessorR.S. Bisht and his team discovered

the 10-sign inscription in 1991, thesandstone inscription was discoveredin 1999. (Despite toiling for severaldecades, scholars have not so far beenable to decipher the Indus script,which runs from right to left.)

The eminent Finnish Indologistand scholar in the Indus script AskoParpola, in an interview to S. Theo-dore Baskaran, published in The Hin-du on March 24, 2008, called theDholavira signboard with 10 signs“the first example of what we couldcall monumental inscriptions”.

He added: “Each sign is about 30cm high. The usual sign on a seal isless than 1 cm, as you know. Theboard itself is three metres long. Wehave also got some new seals and arte-facts. However, though these are im-portant finds, they do not bring aboutany fundamental change in our un-derstanding of the Indus script.”

It was under interesting circum-stances that the signboard inscription

Inscriptions on stone and wood

V.V.

KR

ISH

NAN

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


ONE OF SEVERALarchitectural stonemembers found inthe citadel duringthe excavations.They were hewnout of sandstoneand used fordecorativepurposes.

came to light. Y.S. Rawat, a memberof Bisht’s team, and Namit Bisht, thelatter’s teenaged son, were brushingthe floor of the western chamber ofthe north gate of the citadel whenRawat found something gleaming.He felt that it could be a mould. Aftertwo days of careful brushing, Rawatand Namit exposed a peepal-leaf sign.

“Slowly, in three months, wecould expose the entire inscription,”said Bisht. “The peepal leaf is one ofthe 10 signs in the inscription.”

He surmised that the signboardwas not lying in its original place.Since the width of the signboardequalled the width of the passage(doorway) of the north gate, it musthave been erected just above thenorth gate, he opined. Since the let-ters were made of baked gypsum andthe signboard had been erected at acommanding height, it must havebeen visible even to the people in themiddle town and lower town. It washard gypsum because it was bakedand the moisture had been allowed toevaporate.

“When the Harappans were leav-ing the city, they must have respect-fully removed the signboard and

placed it in the chamber because ofthe reverence they had for it. Theinscription could stand for the nameof the city, the king or the ruling fam-ily,” said Bisht.

The four-sign inscription onstone is said to be the first inscriptionto have been found on stone in theIndus plains. It must have been long-er because the stone slab is brokenafter the fourth sign.

“It was natural rock cut into ashape and then engraved with an in-scription with a tool. I am sure theremust be more [broken] pieces withthe inscription,” Bisht said.

The stone with the inscriptionhad been used as building materialfor making underground chambersin the bailey area of the citadel duringstage V of the seven stages of theIndus civilisation at Dholavira.Though the stone was found in anunderground chamber, it originallybelonged to some other structure.

Bisht opined that the Harappanswere a literate people. The com-manding height at which the 10-signboard had been erected showed thatit was meant to be read by all people.

Besides, seals with Indus signs

were found everywhere in the city –in the citadel, middle town, lowertown, annexe, and so on. It meant alarge majority of the people knewhow to read and write. The Indusscript had been found on pottery aswell. Even children wrote on pot-sherds.

Bisht said: “The argument thatliteracy was confined to a few peopleis not correct. You find inscriptionson pottery, bangles and even coppertools. This is not graffiti, which ischild’s play. The finest things wereavailable even to the lowest sectionsof society. The same seals, beads andpottery were found everywhere in thecastle, bailey, the middle town andthe lower town of the settlement atDholavira, as if the entire populationhad wealth.

“It appears to be an egalitariansociety. This does not happen else-where [in other Indus sites]. On thebasis of architecture, you can decidethe places that were seats of author-ity. However, on the basis of materialculture, you cannot distinguish be-tween the major divisions of the city –among its inhabitants.”

T.S. Subramanian

THE FOUR-SIGNINSCRIPTION onsandstone,reportedly the firstof its kind onsandstone found atHarappan sites.

CO

UR

TESY

ASI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


those attending on the privileged occu-pants of the castle.

The first settlement, establishedduring stage I, beginning circa 3000BCE, included a strong fortress. Instage II, the settlement expanded to-wards the north. Around the end ofstage II and the beginning of stage III,an earthquake struck the area. In stageIII, which was the most creative phaseand lasted from about 2850 BCE to2500 BCE, the fortress was convertedinto a castle, and the castle was at-tached to another fortified area, laterchristened “bailey” by ASI archaeol-ogists. The castle was the seat of au-thority. To the north of the citadel wasthe big, multipurpose stadium, 283metres long and 48 metres wide. Asmaller stadium also came up near by.Reservoirs were created south, northand west of the built-up divisions.

Stage III ended when a powerfulearthquake struck again. Its effectcould be seen in several places exposedby the excavation, especially on the de-fensive wall of the fortification. Afterthe earthquake, repairs were under-taken and a lower town was built dur-ing the terminal phase of stage III. Thecity walls were extended to enclose thelower town. Thus, the entire settle-ment attained the status of a cityscape.The streets in this city ran in cardinaldirections. The city had a drainage sys-tem, with drains about 1.5 metres deepand one metre wide. There was an effi-cient system for letting out storm wa-ter so that the city did not flood duringthe rains.

Three square steatite seals were ex-cavated from deposits at various stra-tigraphic levels of stage III. The sealshad figures but no Indus inscriptions.

Typical Harappan pottery with beauti-ful, painted motifs were also found.

“Stage IV, which began around2500 BCE, belongs to that form ofclassical Harappan culture which is sofamiliar to us from a large number ofexcavated sites. Almost all the salientfeatures of city planning had beenscrupulously maintained along withmonumental structures such as gate-ways, fortifications, drainage systemsand so on,” says Bisht. “The famous10-signed inscription of unusuallylarge size was surely in use during thisstage. All the classical Harappan ele-ments, such as pottery, seals, beads,and items of gold, silver, copper, ivory,shell, faience, steatite, clay and stones,were found in abundance.”

The Harappan system attained itspeak during stage IV and continuedfor another five centuries, well intostage V. But towards the end of stage V,the system was under stress. SaysBisht: “In this phase, you find a prolif-eration of craftsmen’s activities. Thiswas the stage where we found the max-imum number of seals, sealings, tab-lets, weights and classical Harappanpottery. During this period, one finds aproliferation of shell-work, bead-work, metal-work and work on stone.The Harappans at Dholavira special-ised in making beautifully carved ar-chitectural members, which theyexported to Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.”

Indeed, the architectural membersfound in all three places were made ofsandstone and they exhibited the samecarvings and workmanship. Architec-tural members made of the same stoneand with similar shape, size and crafts-manship were found at Mohenjo-daroand Harappa. “They were finished atDholavira and transported to othersites because the technology and theright material were available at Dhola-vira,” he explained.

A R T E F A C T SThe rich harvest of artefacts that stagesIII and IV of the Dholavira excavationsyielded has to be seen to be believed.While a small site museum at Dholavi-ra displays the three-metre-long 10-

THE funerary or sepulchral archi-tecture of Dholavira is unique in sev-eral ways. To the west of theHarappan settlement lay its ceme-tery, covering a large area. In thecemetery were cist burials that in-cluded simple cists, a cist in a cairncircle, a circle or a half-circle con-taining several graves.

No grave had any skeleton butthey had grave goods, especially pot-tery. “The graves were symbolic.They were memorial graves,” saidProfessor R.S. Bisht, who led the Ar-chaeological Survey of India’s exca-vations for 13 field seasons from1990 to 2005 at Dholavira.

In addition, the ASI found seven

Cist burial

Around 2000BCE, the entiresettlement wasabandoned forseveral decades.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


A CIST BURIAL with a capstone and grave pottery found outside theexcavated settlement. This discovery, says Bisht, establishes that theroots of cist burial lie in India.

CO

UR

TESY

ASI

semi-circular or hemisphericalgraves, two of which it excavated.They were made of bricks, circular inshape, and built over large rock-cutchambers. While one structure was inthe form of a spoked wheel, anotherhad no spokes.

One of the chambers yielded a lotof ritual pottery, which were not ar-ranged in an orderly manner. It alsoyielded a complete necklace made ofbeads of steatite strung on a copperwire with a hook on either end, a solidgold bangle resembling a peepal leaf,and so on.

Speaking about the spoked wheeldesign and graves in the shape of anunspoked wheel, Bisht quoted from

the Satapatha Brahmana and theSulba Sutras (later Vedic texts) topoint out that such graves were men-tioned in these texts.

Referring to the cist burials, Bishtsaid: “There are graves at Dholavirathat are prototypes of megalithictombs. They suggest that the roots ofthe megalithic tombs are not outsideIndia but within India. How the tra-dition travelled to South India needsinvestigation.”

Bisht, alluding to claims made bysome historians that horse bones hadbeen found at some of the Harappansites, said no horse bones had beenfound at Dholavira.

T.S. Subramanian

sign Indus inscription and other arte-facts, the rest of the cornucopia havebeen brought to Purana Quila, NewDelhi, where they are being document-ed by Appu Singh Sharan, Shalini Tri-pathi, Rajesh Kumar and BaianathDutt, all Assistant Archaeologists ofthe ASI. The artefacts include a gianthammer, a big chisel and a hand-heldmirror, all in bronze; a gold wire, agold ear stud; gold globules with holesin them for thread to pass through;copper bangles and celts; phallus-likesymbols fashioned in stone; stonewareand shell bangles; pottery with floraland animal designs; beads made ofagate, faience and carnelian; humpedanimals made of carnelian; a circularseal; square seals with figures and In-dus signs; and pottery with paintedmotifs of indescribable beauty. Otherartefacts unearthed include goblets; abig dish-on-stand; perforated jars;beautiful tumblers made of terracotta;architectural members made of basaltstone; grinding stones; mortars; pes-tles, and so on.

At the end of stage V, which wasaround 2000 BCE, the entire settle-ment was abandoned for several dec-ades before stage VI began and the lateHarappans came to occupy it again.But they confined themselves to thecitadel and the southern margin of themiddle town. The lower town was notoccupied at all. The one-time cityshrank into a town in stage VI, which iscalled the late Harappan stage. Homeswere laid out differently. They werejerry-built. After the Harappansstayed there for a century or more, theydeserted the settlement. The towncould have remained deserted for a fewcenturies.

The newcomers of stage VII, whohad forgotten all the classical Harap-pan urban activities of the previousgenerations, lived in circular huts builthere and there. They were poor andlived there for about five decades, andfinally abandoned the site around1500 BCE. Bisht summed up: “Thus,the urbanisation that made its humblebeginnings in stage I and kept pro-gressing through stages II, III and IV,started decaying in stage V. It under-

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


TERRACOTTA FIGURINES OF humans and (below) animals.

Artefacts

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


went a transformation in stage VI witha feeble revival only to become totallyde-urbanised in stage VII. The site wasnever occupied thereafter.”

W A T E R - H A R V E S T I N GThe water-harvesting system devel-oped at Dholavira was stupendous. Itformed an integral part of the plan-ning of the city. Since the city lay be-tween the seasonal channels ofMansar and Manhar, their waterswere harnessed fully.

The ASI unearthed evidence ofcheck-dams on the Mansar and theManhar. From these check-dams, wa-ter was let into a series of reservoirsraised on the eastern, western andsouthern sides of the city’s built-up ar-eas but within the fortification walls.All the reservoirs were interconnected.One reservoir was purely rock-cut. TheHarappans cut the rock from the sur-face to the depth they wanted and thenthey raised linear walls on the sides.The largest of the reservoirs had threeflights of steps leading to the bottomand the others had two flights. Thestaircases were to enable people towalk down and fetch water as the wa-ter level went down. Indeed, a beauti-ful stepped well was carved out ofrock-bed in the eastern reservoir.

“The kind of efficient system theHarappans of Dholavira developed forconservation, harvesting and storageof water speaks eloquently about theiradvanced hydraulic engineering, giventhe state of technology in the thirdmillennium BCE,” said Bisht.

Danino estimated that Dholaviramust have been an “impressive lakecity” with reservoirs covering morethan 10 hectares. One of the largest,just south of the castle, was cut in rockand measured 95 metres by 11.42metres.

The ASI team also found a sand-stone quarry where it unearthed beau-tiful architectural members.Obviously, after the sandstone wasquarried, it was cut into architecturalmembers at the quarry and transport-ed to the nearby settlement. Severalpieces with defects were found dis-carded in the quarry. �

A BIG BRONZEhammer.

COPPER OBJECTS FOUND at thesite included hand-held mirrors,bangles, plates and fish hooks.

SEALS WITH THEcharacteristicunicorn figure andother signs.

A GAME, APPARENTLYinvolving a puzzle, found atthe site.

PIC

TUR

ES C

OU

RTE

SY A

SI

A WIRE AND an ear-stud, both made of gold.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Artefacts

THIS book, by the veteran in-ternational correspondentUli Schmetzer, who spentmuch of his professional lifeworking for the once vener-

able Chicago Tribune, makes rivetingreading for media practitioners andstudents of international affairs.Schmetzer had the good luck or knackof being at various global hot spots justas a crisis broke out. As a rookie report-er for Reuters, he witnessed first handthe Tlatelolco Square massacre inMexico City of student protesters bythe Mexican Army as the country waspreparing to host the Olympics in1968. He reported for the wire servicefrom Chile when the government ofSalvadore Allende was overthrown in aUnited States-backed coup. As Chica-go Tribune’s foreign correspondent, hecovered Western Europe, West Asia,China and India. Schmetzer was Chi-cago Tribune’s correspondent in NewDelhi in the late 1990s.

I M M I G R A N T B A S H I N GOf German parentage, Schmetzergrew up in Australia. He started hiscareer in the highly competitive worldof tabloid journalism in the late 1950s.He starts his book by recounting hisexperiences about growing up andworking in Australia. Schmetzerwrites that even in the late 1940s andearly 1950s, “immigrant bashing” wasan Australian pastime, despite the factthat most of the newcomers at the timewere Europeans from the war-ravagedparts of the continent. “In those days,the 1950s and the 1960s, migrantswere second-rate citizens,” he writes.

According to Schmetzer, who hasAustralian citizenship and spends a lot

of time in that country, Asians todayoccupy the bottom rung of Australiansociety as Germans, Italians, Serbs andother European immigrant communi-ties have moved up the ladder. Hegives many personal anecdotes to but-tress his point. Ironically, after he re-tired from Tribune, Schmetzer wassubjected to a witch-hunt for a story hehad written about racism in Australia.His alleged journalistic improprietywas to change a name to protect hissource.

Of particular interest to the read-ers are the illustrations of double stan-dards adopted by his employers in

Media spin

IN REVIEW

Times of Terror: Notebooksof a Foreign Correspondentby Uli Schmetzer; TizuliPublishing; pages 364.

A riveting read about the functioning of the corporate media. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

books

particular and the Western media ingeneral on issues relating to the free-dom of the press.

Schmetzer’s eyewitness accountsof the government-ordered mayhemin Mexico City did not find their wayinto print. Reports of the killing of alarge number of students were sup-pressed after the Mexican and theUnited States governments broughtpressure to bear on the media. The topnews agency, which had employedSchmetzer at the time, instead chose togive prominence to the version put outby the government that those killedwere dangerous communist agitatorsfinanced by the Cuban and Russiangovernments.

R I G H T - W I N G A G E N D A SIn the case of Chile, too, Schmetzernotes that his well-documented storiesabout Allende’s supporters beingtortured and the story about SocialistParty and Communist Party activistsmassed in a football field – some ofthem executed later – were suppressedby the news agency. The main reasonthe Western media did this, he notes,was that Washington supported thecoup and was, therefore, anxious tokeep the death roll low. The other im-portant reason was that most of thewire subscribers were big newspapergroups with pronounced right-wingagendas. His bosses recalled him fromChile and supplanted him with a re-porter known for his anti-Left bias.

Schmetzer’s exit was hastened by aquestion he asked General Pinochetabout bodies with their hands tied be-ing fished out of the river that flowsthrough the capital city. Pinochet’s glibreply was that “many communists are

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


committing suicide by throwing them-selves into the river”. Schmetzer quitReuters, and his next full-time job waswith Chicago Tribune in Rome. Hehad the opportunity to cover the Vat-ican, including the events surroundingthe sudden death of John Paul I andthe murky politics that preceded theanointment of his successor.

C O V E R I N G W E S T A S I ASchmetzer had the privilege of beingthe first Western journalist allowed toenter Albania, then under the iron ruleof Enver Hoxha. Italy, during his post-ing, was reeling from the terror attacksof the Red Brigades. The kidnappingand killing of Aldo Moro, a formerPrime Minister, was headline newsthroughout the world.

From Rome, Schmetzer coveredWest Asia, the Balkans and NorthAfrica. He recounts in detail the attackPresident Ronald Reagan ordered onLibya. Schmetzer was in Tripoli whenAmerican warplanes attacked manytargets, including Libyan leaderMuammar Gaddafi’s home.

The editors at Tribune, happy withSchmetzer’s exclusive stories, accededto his request for a posting in Beijing.The timing was fortuitous. Accordingto Schmetzer, China was a country“where a billion people moved on bicy-cles when I arrived and were stuck inautomobile jams when I left”.

A major part of his book is devotedto the events surrounding the Tianan-men incident. He recounts the naivetyof the student leadership, which tried

to challenge the authority of the Com-munist Party. He also gives illustra-tions of the Western media’smanipulation of the news from Chinaduring those turbulent years. “Our re-ports fell miserably short of evaluatingthe consequences to the rest of theworld if China was plunged intochaos,” notes Schmetzer.

Western media reports that be-tween 10,000 and 20,000 people werekilled in Beijing were a “gross and irre-sponsible exaggeration” based on Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA)briefings. According to him, the failureof the student revolt was a factor thatpaved the way for China’s rise as thenext superpower. Schmetzer’s disillu-sionment with his bosses at the Tri-bune becomes evident when he talks

A LONE PROTESTER blocks a line of tanks in Beijing on June 5, 1989. Uli Schmetzer says Western media reports that between 10,000 and 20,000 people were killed in Beijing were a “gross and irresponsible exaggeration”based on CIA briefings.

JEFF

WID

ENER

AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


about his coverage of Israel and theoccupied territories. His reports aboutthe suffering of the Palestinian people,the construction of the separation walland related stories elicited a barrage ofcriticism from the influential Jewishlobby in the U.S. Schmetzer was givenverbal instructions by his bosses tostop highlighting issues such as Israel’ssettlement-building and other formsof land-grabbing. He was politely toldnot to write any more on the “sep-aration wall” because it “was over-done”.

An earlier story in which he quotedthe mayor of a West Bank town de-scribing the wall as “a blatant landgrab” was killed. The author notes thatChicago Tribune, like other leadingAmerican papers, later chose a corre-spondent holding American-Israeli ci-tizenship to report from Tel Aviv. “It isunfair to expect from these people abalanced report on the Israel-Pales-tine conflict. For a start they are re-porting from the Israeli side and theirhearts and souls are steeped in Jewishculture,” Schmetzer writes.

In the early 1990s, Schmetzeralong with another colleague, BobRowley, was assigned to do a story onglobal smuggling of nuclear materialand weapons.

After travelling around the worldand spending more than $80,000 ofTribune’s money, an interesting story,which uncovered the smuggling of plu-tonium in tree trunks from EasternEurope, CIA officers trying to buy backStringer missiles from the Afghan Mu-jahideen, and an accident involving aPolish plutonium smuggler who diedwhile carrying his consignment in abriefcase, was sent to the Chicago deskof the newspaper. The story never sawthe light of day.

According to Schmetzer, it was ru-moured that the State Department didnot want the story to be published as itwould “panic” the public. “Seven yearslater, on September 11, 2001, Amer-icans were jolted out of their fake senseof security and really panicked.”

Schmetzer recounts another inci-dent to bolster his argument. Duringhis stint in India, he wrote a story on

the fight between Indian farmers andscientists and the Monsanto Companyover the introduction of geneticallymodified seeds (GMS). His story hadfocussed on the fears of Indian farmersthat GMS could spell the end of nativeseeds, might transmigrate and wouldgrant Monsanto a monopoly overseeds in the second-most populous na-tion of the world.

The desk in Chicago asked him forclarifications to which Schmetzer im-mediately replied. A few hours later, arepresentative of Monsanto toldSchmetzer that there was an inaccu-racy in the third paragraph of his copy.The Monsanto Company was obvious-ly shown the copy sent by the corre-spondent in India. The story was neverpublished.

The author acknowledges that af-ter having covered the world’s hotspots for decades, he started becomingincreasingly outraged by the brutalityand the disproportionate retributionfor the so-called acts of “terrorism”,which he feels in reality were mainlyresistance to occupation and the “cava-lier ways Washington and Tel Avivbrushed away their blatant war crimesagainst civilian populations, definingthem as unfortunate collateral dam-age”.

H O G W A S HJournalists, he writes, have very littleoption but to dish out the “hogwash”. Ifthey do not include the official brief-ings, the “home desk” will incorporatethe official version anyway. “Soon yourealise news is diluted and distilled bypolitical and corporate interests well

before it reaches the consumer,” he ob-serves. Schmetzer complains that hisstories were extensively rewritten forpartisan purposes. But he stoically ac-cepted his fate, noting that in the “bat-tle between editors andcorrespondents, the correspondent ispre-destined for defeat even thoughmost of them will boast when askedthey have ‘never’ been rewritten.”

Schmetzer describes Westernmedia outlets as nothing better than“propaganda machines, a little subtlerperhaps than the one in the formerSoviet Union”. Human rights issues,he notes, are pretexts to justify militaryinterventions and organisations suchas the World Bank and the Interna-tional Monetary Fund are no morethan “a cartel of handout-merchants tomake the world’s poor accept their mi-serable lot instead of rioting for a bet-ter deal”.

He blames the often naive, thoughsometimes complacent, mass mediafor justifying the bellicose acts ofWestern governments. The “ridicu-lous” claim of objectivity in reportingnews in the U.S. has been repeatedlyexposed by the “double standards”adopted by the American media. “It isa country in which ‘objectivity’ is ourway and for whom elections in othercountries are a good thing as long asthey produce winners who are on ourside,” he writes.

P E D D L I N G F A I R Y T A L E SIn the Epilogue to his book, Schmetzerconcludes that “our mass media stillpeddles fairy tales” narrated by gov-ernment officials, establishment “ex-perts” and senior politicians, whodominate the talk shows and news-print. Critics of the system are ignoredor given limited space. He points outthat the Pentagon alone trained 75military officers to be on televisionshows to give a positive spin on the warin Iraq. These “military experts” werequoted 4,500 times by major newsoutlets.

The book is recommended readingfor all those interested in world affairsand in the functioning of the corporatemedia. �

His eyewitnessaccount of themayhem inMexico Citydid not find itsway into print.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


THE life of Gauhar Jaan(1873-1930) is a poignantchapter in the annals of Hin-dustani classical music ofthe 20th century. She was

the first recording artist in India, andthe most prolific – she had 600 gra-mophone discs to her credit – and pop-ular, too. Her glory years of recordingsand concerts – one fed off the other –which began with the century and ex-tended up to 1920 gave her a reach thatwas the envy of many a kalavant, ustador pandit. The fact that she was a sing-ing courtesan, or tawaif, did not en-dear her to the so-called masters ofHindustani music. It did not matter tothem that she was superbly trained,highly literate like her courtesanmother, Malka Jaan, and composedpoetry in Urdu and Persian apart fromwriting lyrics for thumris, horis, chai-tis, dadras and chhota khayals, whichwere also composed by her. Her worstdetractors admitted that she had anextremely melodious voice and impec-cable aesthetics.

Gauhar Jaan was of mixed parent-age. Her father, Robert William Yeo-ward, an Armenian Christian, was anengineer and indigo planter in Azam-garh, Uttar Pradesh, and her mother,Victoria Hemmings, was a ProtestantChristian. The marriage was short-lived as her father, under trying cir-cumstances, abandoned the family,forcing her mother to seek the protec-tion of a Muslim nobleman, Khurshid.Victoria converted to Islam and be-came the famous tawaif of her day,Malka Jaan, in Varanasi [Banaras],where she moved along with her loverand little daughter.

Gauhar Jaan, despite her turbulentchildhood marked by privations,

they bordered on dhrupad, could alsobe said about Gauhar Jaan, whosesinging Siddheswari admired unre-servedly as an aspiring artist in Vara-nasi in the late 1920s.

It was a strictly regimented class-ridden feudal society that GauharJaan, a tawaif, practised her art in. Thefact that she had conquered the heartsof maharajas, nawabs and very richmerchants through her singing andher beauty, in that order, did not bringher much happiness. She earned largesums of money in her prime andsquandered it all away on feckless lov-ers who tried to seize her property,thus involving her in expensive andlong-drawn-out lawsuits. Her extrava-gant lifestyle did not help either tostem the outflow of money during themost crucial period in her life as anartist and as a woman.

She was forced in the late 1920s toseek refuge in the court of the Mah-araja of Mysore, Nalawadi KrishnarajaWodeyar, as a musician. His brotherhad heard her earlier, at a private soi-ree in Bombay [Mumbai], and wasbowled over by her music. He recom-mended that she adorn the Mysorecourt as a singer. She was forced toleave her beloved Calcutta [Kolkata]because of the financially draininglawsuits against her former employeeand lover, Abbas. She died on January17, 1930, unattended in a hospital inMysore.

Vikram Sampath’s biography ‘MyName is Gauhar Jaan!’ – The Life andTimes of a Musician is remarkable forits fidelity to the singer’s art and pains-taking research into the historical andsociological background to the worldshe lived in. The fact that he is a trainedCarnatic musician and a great fan of

proved to be an exceptionally talentedgirl with a prodigious memory and in-nate musicality. Apart from Urdu, Per-sian, Hindi (Awadhi and Bhojpuri),she was also fluent in Bengali, Punjabiand English.

Hers was a remarkable feat of self-education. She was trained initially indhrupad, which gave her a solid base toexplore other genres like khayal, da-dra, thumri, ghazal and chaiti. Herthumris and Bengali kirtans were re-dolent of feeling and had the gravity ofdhrupad. What Pandit Ravi Shankarsaid of Siddheswari Devi’s singing,that her thumris were so grand that

Poignant notes

IN REVIEW

‘My Name Is Gauhar Jaan!’ –The Life and Times of aMusician by Vikram Sampath;Rupa & Co, 2010; pages 331,Rs.595 (hard cover).

The biography of Gauhar Jaan is remarkable for its fidelity to the singer’s art and

the painstaking research into her life and times. B Y P A R T H A C H A T T E R J E E

books/review

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Hindustani music as well has helpedhim considerably in this enterprise. Hehas managed to trace a hundred shel-lac gramophone records of GauharJaan and has digitally transferred 25 ofthem onto a compact disc that comeswith the book. These recordings, cov-ering more or less the entire period ofher artistic life, show conclusivelywhat a great singer she was.

A L I F E F U L L O F P A S S I O NGauhar Jaan lived a life full of passionand often of compassion. She took onIndu Bala, the daughter of impover-ished circus performers, and trainedher to become an excellent singer. Oneof the jottings in Indu Bala’s diaries is acomposition by Gauhar Jaan, in therare raga Lakshmi Todi set to jhap tala,Tum hazarat khwaja, sab rajan ke ra-ja; Hoon aayi tero darwaja\ Gauharpyari ki araz yahi hai, jag mein rakhomeri laaja.

Not every aspiring tawaif had suchgood and generous teacher as Indu Ba-la found in Gauhar Jaan. The youngSiddheswari had to endure muchharshness in order to learn music atthe house of her aunt, Rajeshwari Bai,in Varanasi. The world of the tawaif orbaiji was extremely competitive andcruel and the casualty list was very long– only the toughest, and sometimes themost gifted, managed to survive.

No ustad worth the name in the20th century – Baba Allauddin Khanof Maihar being perhaps the only ex-ception – was not supported in hisyears of struggle, or even later, by atawaif. Ironically, the ustads onlytaught them enough so that they couldearn a decent and, occasionally, ahandsome living. Munni Bai, the starpupil of Khan Sahib Abdul KarimKhan of the kirana gharana, couldelaborate, with great taste and refine-ment, for an hour or even an hour anda half on difficult ragas like BilaskhaniTodi. Hearing her at one of her con-certs, Ustad Alladiya Khan chided hisfriend Abdul Karim Khan Saheb, thus:“What are you doing? Just teach her asmuch as is required. If she starts sing-ing for one and a half hours, who willlisten to us?”

Gauhar Jaan learned from a widevariety of ustads including the brilliantUstad Kale Khan of Patiala when hevisited Calcutta. The teaching, thoughvery beneficial for Gauhar, came to asudden end because Kale Khan de-manded sexual favours of her in re-turn. She had, however, absorbedquite a lot of music from him, beingthorough in her approach to learning.

There was a tendency to be patro-

nising about Gauhar Jaan’s khayalsinging amongst the ustads. Theythought her raga elaboration was al-right and no more. But her thumri,dadra and chaiti singing was deemedmarvellous even by her opponents.Once, after Zohra Bai gave a solidkhayal rendition and Gauhar Jaan hadto follow, she realised that if she sang akhayal it would not impress the listen-ers. Instead she sang two thumris, Pa-ni bhare ri kaun albelo ki naar, andthen her own composition, Ras kebhare tore naina. When she finished,people had forgotten Zohra Bai’s mu-sically erudite khayal recital.

“The renowned musicologist Tha-kur Jaidev Singh speaks highly of Gau-har Jaan as being without ‘peer in herthumri singing and in her rendering ofother light classical types’. He even re-called attending unforgettable night-long sessions starting at 8 p.m. be-tween Gauhar Jaan and AgrewaliMalka Jaan. In these fascinating ses-sions of Sawal-Jawab or musical re-partees between two veteran singers,the audience would find it difficult todecide who the better of the two was.”

M A S T E R L Y I M P R O V I S E RGauhar Jaan’s intrinsic musical talentwas often somewhat played down be-cause of her beauty and her consum-mate skill at ‘bhav’, that is, the ability toconvey through facial expressions theemotional import of the thumri beingsung. ‘Bhav Batana’ was an importantpart of Kathak dance in North India.Practitioners of light classical genreslike thumri were often well acquaintedwith Kathak and Bhav Batana. Gauharwas a terrific singer and a masterlyimproviser.

Her flamboyance attracted manywell-heeled males. She lost her ‘nath’or nose-ring to Nimai Sen, a wealthyzamindar from Behrampore. He wasdeeply in love with her but refused totake her as his legal wife, possibly forfear of parental opposition. He was nodifferent from most sons of the landedclass whose courage ran out once facedwith the possibility of being disinher-ited. She went to see her lover when hewas dying but reached too late. Sen

GAUHAR JAAN, 1896. Her intrinsicmusical talent was often playeddown because of her beauty and herconsummate skill at ‘bhav’, theability to convey through facialexpressions the emotional import ofthe thumri being sung.

Gauhar Jaan, a tawaif,practised herart in a strictlyregimented,class-ridden,feudal society.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


had kept Gauhar’s nose-stud, whichshe had given him as a memento somany years ago. He had instructed anattendant to give it to her if she came.“Gauhar was deeply touched and wasdrowned in grief and sorrow for manymonths.” This perhaps was the onlyinstance of true love in Gauhar’s life.The other males who came were eitherfortune hunters such as Shaikh Bha-gloo and Abbas or those who, struck byher glamour and talent, would showertheir wealth on her for the pleasure of apassing dalliance.

The 1920s were bad for her. Shewas already in her late forties, albeitvery attractively so. Her lawsuit withher former employee-turned lover,Abbas, had completely drained heremotionally and financially. She with-drew into herself. She lost, as a result,many lucrative private concerts, andoffers for gramophone recordings alsobegan to fall off. She became a mis-anthrope and moved to a two-roomaccommodation on Harrison Road,Calcutta. A sketch from 1928 by De-biprased Garg, Raja Mahishadal,shows her as a dishevelled, sad, be-spectacled woman with downcast eyes.A far cry from the beautiful, middle-

aged woman of only a couple of yearsago.

Her last years were dogged by un-ending bad luck. Nawab Hamid AliKhan of Rampur, a great connoisseurof music, invited her to grace his courtas a musician and even let her stay inthe zenana of his family. But a strangeincident brought the cordial relation-ship to an abrupt end. Lord Irwin, vis-iting Rampur, was lavishlyentertained, and a part of it was a con-cert by Gauhar Jaan. She sang glori-ously. She, however, made oneinadvertent mistake. Dressed in a sa-ree with her customary elegance, shepinned all the medals she had receivedfrom bigwigs during her illustrious ca-reer on her chest. After the concert,against all norms of civilised etiquette,Lord Irwin reached out to examine themedals. Nawab Hamid Ali was in-censed. He told Gauhar later, “So youdid manage to get a white man to touchyour breast, didn’t you?” She, due to asilly, unthinking act on her part, foundherself suddenly out of favour with thenawab. Most humiliating of all was thediscovery that the precious diamondsshe had got as gifts from him wereactually cheap imitations.

The year was 1928. There was noway out for her but to proceed to theMysore court, but before that therewas a stopover in Bombay. In May1928, Seth Madho Das Gokul Das Pas-ta invited her to be his guest and do aseries of concerts over the next sixmonths. He even made her his ‘sister’.It was at one such soiree that the Mah-araja of Mysore’s younger brotherheard her. The rest, as they say, ishistory.

She was utterly humiliated to findthat she had been engaged on a salaryof Rs.500. The final blow came whenSeth Madho Das Gokul Das Pastabrought a lawsuit against her for non-payment of rent during her stay inBombay.

Instead of supporting her, the My-sore court officials saw to it that half ofher salary was deducted to pay herarrears in accordance with the instruc-tions of a Bombay court.

Vikram Sampath brings out thepoignancy of Gauhar Jaan’s life andalso the great musical gift she had beenbestowed with by nature. Sampath’s isan unusual and beautiful book, thefirst such in English on a Hindustaniclassical musician. �

GAUHAR JAAN IN a recording studio. She was the first recording artist in India and had 600 gramophone discs toher credit.

CO

UR

TESY

: VIK

RAN

T AJ

GAO

NK

AR

books/review J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


IT was the Dreyfus case and EmileZola’s magnificent role in it thatalerted French intellectuals totheir higher calling as moralwatchmen over the modern state.

Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the FrenchArmy, was found guilty by a militarytribunal in 1894 of selling secrets to theGermans. He was sentenced to perpet-ual imprisonment. A special law waspassed so that he could serve his sen-tence on Devil’s Island, an arid rockformation off the shore of FrenchGuiana. He was held in solitary con-finement in a stone cell, with no relieffrom the tropical heat.

There was no precedent in Frenchlaw for such brutal treatment. Theusual punishment of exile to a remotepenal colony simply would not satisfy aMinister of War enraged by Dreyfus’refusal to confess, or the anti-Semiticand nationalist public. Eventually,Dreyfus was completely exonerated.

It, however, exposed gross miscon-duct at the highest level in the Army,divided the nation and held it to rid-icule abroad. Louis Begley, a prize-winning novelist and lawyer of 45years’ standing, tears the prosecutioncase to shreds.

The labour has a purpose. It is toilluminate the parallel between theDreyfus affair and the practice oftorture by the United States under Ge-orge W. Bush, between Devil’s Islandand Guantanamo. As ever, we face thedilemmas of liberty vs security andmass hysteria, fuelled in our age bytelevision, whenever a man is chargedwith treason. Even when the charge ismanifestly justified, the result can bedenial of a fair trial; if it is not, therecan be a monstrous wrong.

The military tribunal allowed last-

writing linked him, a similarity onwhich handwriting experts could notagree.

He was held incommunicado fortwo weeks and then put up for trial by acourt martial. On December 19, 1894,he was convicted and sentenced. Fiveyears later, the conviction was set asideby the Court de Cassation, the highestcourt of France. He was to be triedafresh, which was all he wanted – a fairtrial. He had a touching faith in theArmy and the men who led it.

L’Affaire Dreyfus tore the nationapart. “By 1898 the Dreyfusard camp,led by Mathieu Dreyfus [his brother],included centrist and left-wing politic-ians, and, with significant and noto-rious exceptions, most leadingintellectuals, artists, writers, and aca-demics, as well as, in smaller numbers,Army officers and members of the cler-gy…. Later came revelations of the ille-galities committed at the Paris courtmartial.

“Public opinion outside of Francewas overwhelmingly on the side ofDreyfus…. Spectacular supporters ofDreyfus outside France includedQueen Victoria and her attorney gen-eral, Empress Eugenie, the widow ofNapoleon III :…. Anti-Dreyfusardswere a right-wing coalition of Armyofficers, anti-Semites, militarists, ex-treme nationalists” – France’s SanghParivar.

He was retried in 1899 and foundguilty, by a vote of 5-2, but with “exten-uating circumstances”. Such a grudg-ing retreat is typical of all states. TheArmy’s top brass was present in courtto proclaim his guilt to the seven mil-itary officers trying him. The decline ofthe Right facilitated redress; Dreyfusasked for a review based on fresh evi-

minute secret introduction of evi-dence, without sharing that evidencewith the defence. Anti-Semitismtransformed suspicion into certainty.Top military leaders decided that anyaction leading to conviction – evenforgery – was justified. A whistleblow-er, Lt. Col Picquant, who recognisedboth Dreyfus’ innocence and the riskssuch a miscarriage of justice mightpose to the nation, was prosecuted andpunished.

The press and the public had beenexcluded from the trial. The case oftreasonable espionage rested on a sin-gle piece of paper to which nothingexcept an alleged similarity of hand-

Dissent & DreyfusThe book draws a parallel between the Dreyfus affair and the practice of torture

by the U.S., between Devil’s Island and Guantanamo. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

IN REVIEW

Why the Dreyfus AffairMatters by Louis Begley; Yale University Press; pages 249; £18.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


dence available to him. In 1903, thecase was sent to the Court of Cassation.In 1906, Dreyfus was declared inno-cent. He was made a major and even-tually an officer of the Legion ofHonour.

Two men led the fight, Jean James,the socialist leader, and Emile Zola,the author of the immortal J’accuse anopen letter to the President publishedin L’ Aurore, a left-wing daily. Twohundred thousand copies were soldout within hours. In 1984, France hon-oured both Drefus and Zola.

Begley has the last word. “Timesand circumstances change. SomeGuantanamo detainee may be as in-

nocent as Dreyfus; some surely are not.But before January 20, Guantanamodetainees could look forward only totrials that would be as unfair and lack-ing in protections for the defendant asthe court martial that convicted Drey-fus.

“The Dreyfus case became theDreyfus Affair, which tore Franceapart for long years after the case hadcome to an end and Captain Dreyfushad been fully exonerated. Steps takenby President Obama may spare theUnited States similar bitter strife, bur-nish its soiled image, and offer a pathto freedom to those Guantanamo de-tainees who deserve it.” �

INSIDE THE HIGH-SECURITY detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay U.S.naval base in Cuba on April 27, a detainee attends a "life skills" class.

MICHELLE SHEPARD/AFP PHOTO/POOL

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


“A great empire and little minds go illtogether.”

– Edmund Burke in a speech onconciliation with rebellious America,

on March 22, 1775.

THREE times in the 20thcentury the Unitd States ofAmerica had a God-sentopportunity, at the end of awar, to use its globally

acknowledged military might andpolitical influence to shape a worldorder that respected the interests of all.Three times it failed withconsequences the world suffered andcontinues to suffer.

The first was in 1919, when it failedbecause its President, WoodrowWilson, refused to reckon with therealities in Europe and was tooarrogant to cultivate Congress. Itrefused to ratify the Treaty ofVersailles, and the U.S. did not becomea member of the League of Nations. Itwas thus doomed to irrelevance.

The second opportunity came in1945, when it refused to recognise theSoviet Union’s security interests inGermany and eastern Europe. Stalin’sbrutal methods in the region wereindefensible. But in September 1944Churchill entered into the famous“Percentages Agreement” with Stalinat the Kremlin, and Stalin kept hisword. He refused to back the winningGreek communist guerrillas in Greece.The U.S. rejected the accord andrefused to recognise the securityinterests of a country that had bornethe main brunt of Hitler’s army,sacrificed millions of lives and sufferedruin on large parts of its territory.Without the Soviet Union’scontribution the war could not have

devoid of statesmanship and vision;respectively, Harry Truman andGeorge H.W. Bush. Their aim wasAmerican supremacy. Even Britainwas humiliated and reduced to serve asa servile follower. In 1945, the SovietUnion was led by a dictator like Stalin.All interlocutors accepted that he wasone they could do business with. Asettlement on the basis of therecognition of Soviet interests ineastern Europe and convincingassurances of Western disinterestconditional on respect for theindependence of and democratic orderin the countries of the region was noteven attempted.

In 1989, the USSR was led by aman of rare qualities, MikhailGorbachev. He dismantled theStalinist state and reached out to theWest for an overarching settlement.The British Ambassador to the Soviet

been won, a fact that the West’s leadersdo not quite accept even now.

The third opportunity arose onNovember 9, 1989, when the BerlinWall opened. It was the end of the ColdWar, which had been unleashed byboth blocs. As on the previous twooccasions, the USSR emerged as theweaker power and a suitor for peaceand a fair deal. The U.S. did not snubits overture. It cheated the SovietUnion on the crucial issue of the NorthAtlantic Treaty Organisation’sexpansion eastward, after Germany’sre-unification and its membership ofNATO. Moscow had accepted both;1989 was not only an end but also abeginning. It established a newunipolar order.

In 1919, the U.S. had a great man atthe helm of its affairs, WoodrowWilson. In 1945 and 1989, it was led bymen who were small in stature and

U.S. power playHow the United States misled Russia over NATO expansion eastward amid

Europe’s worries over German reunification. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

books/article

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV. HE reachedout to the West for an overarchingsettlement in 1989-90.

TIM

SH

AFFE

R/R

EUTE

RS

GEORGE H.W. Bush. He deceivedGorbachev, and the deception wascarried further by his successors.

THE

HIN

DU

AR

CH

IVES

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Union, Rodric Braithwaite, records inhis superbly written memoirs the stiffresistance from Soviet officials thatGorbachev faced and defeated (Acrossthe Moscow River: The World TurnedUpside Down; Yale University Press,2002). It is such a man whom Bushdeceived, a deception carried furtherby his successors Bill Clinton andGeorge W. Bush. India owes a lot toGorbachev, so much so that hissuccessor, Boris Yeltsin, snubbedIndia for quite some time. But ourmedia houses, print and TV, relish thecompany of the rejects of the West –John Major, Jeffrey Archer andKissinger & co. Nobody invitesGorbachev to India. Nor, for thatmatter, intellectuals from Japan ordissidents in West Asia. The one thingmore than any other that Russiaresents today is NATO’s expansioneastward.

S T U P E N D O U S R E S E A R C HThe first book is an outstandingly ablework on the diplomacy of the era whenthe Cold War ended. Prof. Sarotte’sresearch is stupendous. She has delvedinto archives, private papers, andsound and video recordings fromMoscow, Warsaw, Dresden, Berlin,Leipzig, Hamburg, Koblenz, Bonn,Paris, London, Cambridge, Princeton,Washington, College Station and SimiValley. She draws on publisheddocuments available in these locationsand in Beijing, Budapest, Prague, andother places as well.

“Particularly useful were theRussian materials from the GorbachevFoundation, the volume of documentson divided Germany published byformer Secretary General MikhailGorbachev and his adviser AnatolyChernyaev, and the so-called Fond 89assembled later by Russian leaderBoris Yeltsin. The East German partyand secret police archives wereessential sources as well, as weredocuments from other Warsaw Pactmember states….

“The relatively recent British FOIA[Freedom of Information Act] meansthat this study can draw on some of thefirst materials released from Number

10 Downing Street under PrimeMinister Margaret Thatcher as well asthe Foreign and CommonwealthOffice under Douglas Hurd; …Fouryears of petitions and appeals in theUnited Kingdom (U.K.) succeededjust in time for inclusion of both sidesin this publication. France does nothave such legislation officially, but myindividual petition for early archivalaccess was approved as well. There isalso a limited selection of primarydocuments published by FrancoisMitterrand. In addition, some top-level materials are available fromBeijing.” Can a student of India’sforeign affairs have similar luck? Shehas interviewed all the principalactors. Besides, The Cold WarInternational History Project and theNational Security Archive in the U.S.have laid students in deep debt.

Jeffrey A. Engel’s collection ofessays includes an insightful one onChina’s path towards 1989 andbeyond, from the Tiananmen Squaredisaster. The contributions arescholarly and thoughtful, but limitedin scope. One in particulardemonstrates how hysterical someleading American columnists can be.They feared that a reunited Germanywould pose a threat to Europe’s unityand democracy.

Appropriately, it is left to Jack F.Matlock, Jr., the U.S. Ambassador tothe Soviet Union, 1987-91, to demolishthe myth of triumphalism that wasspread after 1989. His books Reaganand Gorbachev: How the Cold WarEnded explained the event. Hismemoirs explained why the SovietUnion collapsed. The present work isone of the most reflective and incisiveto appear in a long while. It is a goodantidote to triumphalism and a goodguide on how to fashion a just worldorder.

To the House Committee onInternational Relations on June 20,1996, Matlock, Jr., testified thatGorbachev received a “clearcommitment that if Germany united,and stayed in NATO, the borders ofNATO would not move eastward”.

One cardinal fact must not be

BOOK FACTS

1989: The Struggle to CreatePost-Cold War Europe byMary Elise Sarotte; Princeton University Press; pages 321, $29.95.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall:The Revolutionary Legacy of1989 edited by Jeffrey A.Engel; Oxford UniversityPress; pages 186, $27.95.

Super-power Illusions: HowMyths and False IdeologiesLed America Astray and Howto Return to Reality by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.; YaleUniversity Press; pages 344.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


overlooked. In 1989-90 there was nopublic discussion in the U.S. of thepossible move eastward. Hence, therewas no occasion for Gorbachev tostipulate it, in writing or otherwise. Itwas a fundamental that was implicit inthe accord, one no honourable menwould later violate.

It is accepted by American writersthat there was such a commitment inrespect of NATO’s role in EastGermany, which is spelt out in thedocument “Final Settlement withRespect to Germany”, but none for theregion eastward. This has only to bestated for its disingenuity, ratherdishonesty, to become apparent.

G E R M A N R E U N I F I C A T I O NA N D N A T OBritain, France and even Poland weredead opposed to Germany’sreunification. In September 1989,Margaret Thatcher asked Gorbachevto ignore comments by NATO leaderson the subject. “Britain and France arenot interested in the unification ofGermany. The words written in theNATO communique may sounddifferent, but disregard them. We donot want the unification of Germany.”The reason was that “it would lead tochanges in the post-war borders, andwe cannot allow that because such adevelopment would undermine thestability of the entire internationalsituation”. She assured him that theUnited States shared this view: “I cantell you that this is also the position ofthe U.S. President.”

It was the German Chancellor’sgrit and determination, George H.W.Bush’s support and the indispensablesupport of Mikhail Gorbachev thataccomplished Germany’sreunification, prodded as they all wereby the surge and determination of thepeople themselves. The chain of eventsled to the dissolution of the WarsawPact; yet, NATO survived.

Gorbachev met U.S. Secretary ofState James A. Baker, III, on February9, 1990, and Chancellor Helmut Kohlthe next day. Mark Kramer, director ofthe Cold War Studies Project, took itupon himself to demolish “The myth of

No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge toRussia” in The Washington Quarterly(April 2009). He recognises that“Gorbachev would not even havecontemplated seeking an assuranceabout NATO expansion beyondGermany because in February 1990that issue was not yet within his ken.”

On February 2, Baker met WestGermany’s Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in WashingtonD.C. He announced that both “were infull agreement that there is nointention to extend the NATO area ofdefence and security toward the East”.Kramer adds his gloss – “meaningeastern Germany”.

On February 9, according to theSoviet record, Baker told Gorbachev:“We understand that it would beimportant not only for the USSR butalso for other European countries tohave a guarantee that if the UnitedStates maintains its military presencein Germany within the NATOframework, there will be no extensionof NATO’s jurisdiction or militarypresence one inch to the East.” TheU.S. memorandum of theconversation, compiled by Baker’s aideDennis Ross, contains very similarphrasing, quoting Baker as saying that“there would be no extension ofNATO’s jurisdiction or NATO’s forcesone inch to the East”.

Both documents also indicate thatBaker went on to say that “we believethat the consultations and discussionsin the framework of the ‘2 + 4’ (twoGermanies plus the Four Powers)mechanism must give a guarantee thatthe unification of Germany does notlead to the extension of NATO’smilitary organisation to the East”.Towards the end of the conversation,Baker brought up the point again: “Iwant to ask you a question, which youdon’t need to answer right now.Assuming that unification will occur,would you prefer a united Germanyoutside NATO and completelyindependent with no American troops(on its soil) or a united Germany thatmaintains its ties with NATO, but witha guarantee that NATO’s jurisdictionand forces will not extend to the East

beyond the current line?”Gorbachev told Baker plainly

enough: “Certainly any extension ofthe Zone of NATO would beunacceptable.” It was unqualified.

Kohl had two rounds of talks withGorbachev on February 10. India stillsuppresses the Henderson BrooksReport of 1963 on the War of 1962. ButSoviet and German transcripts of thesesensitive talks of 1990 are in the publicdomain. Kohl at one point mentionedthat “NATO must not expand thesphere of its activity”, a vagueformulation that did not elicit anyreaction from Gorbachev. The WestGerman document renders Kohl’scomment as: “Naturally, NATO mustnot extend its sphere to the territory oftoday’s GDR.”

Gorbachev, initially, was opposedto a united Germany’s membership ofNATO. “It would be foolish if one partof Germany entered NATO and theother part entered the Warsaw Pact.”The U.S. demurred but conceded thatEast Germany should have a “specialmilitary status”.

Bush met Kohl at Camp David onFebruary 24-25. At a joint pressconference Bush said: “We share acommon belief that a unified Germanyshould remain a full member of theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation,including participation in its militarystructure. We agreed that U.S. militaryforces should remain stationed in theunited Germany and elsewhere inEurope as a continuing guarantor ofstability. The Chancellor and I are alsoin agreement that, in a unified state,the former territory of the GDR shouldhave a special military status, that it[sic] would take into account thelegitimate security interests of allinterested countries, including thoseof the Soviet Union.”

On July 15, 1990, Gorbachev madethe crucial concession to Kohl onmembership of NATO. On September12, 1990, was signed the Treaty on theFinal Settlement with Respect toGermany. Article 5 of the treatydefined the “special military status” ofthe territory of eastern Germany bystipulating that no foreign troops

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


other than those of the USSR’sWestern Group of Forces and nosoldiers from German units assignedto NATO would be deployed on theterritory of the former GDR until allSoviet forces were pulled out ofGermany in 1994. Article 5 alsostipulated that after the Sovietwithdrawals were completed, the onlysoldiers ordinarily permitted ineastern Germany would be fromGerman units, including unitsassigned to NATO.

Sarotte takes the reader carefullythrough the record, far lesstendentiously than Kramer. Oneimportant episode she overlookscompletely. Iraq she mentions only inthe context of an exchange of dirtyjokes between Baker and Gorbachev inMoscow preceding a similar elevatedexchange between Gorbachev andBush; “male-bonding” and “displays ofmasculinity in diplomacy”.

Lawyers use the Latin words resgestae, part of the same transaction,the same train of events. In the clime of1990, after Saddam Hussain’s invasionof Kuwait on August 1, 1990, the SovietUnion warmly supported the U.S’moves for Iraq’s eviction from Kuwait.In 2001, Vladimir Putin followed thesame course after 9/11.

S P U R I O U S A P O L O G I ASarotte’s apologia for the U.S’ breachof faith is spurious. “This agreementwas extremely significant to the Sovietleader. He later recalled it as themoment ‘that cleared the way forcompromise’ on Germany. It alsoformed the nucleus of the controversythat remains unresolved to this day.Unwisely, Gorbachev let the meetingend without securing this agreementin any kind of written form. Emergingfrom a political culture in which theword of a leader overruled the law,hoping that he could still find a way todisband both military alliancesentirely, and hesitating to agree to hisend of the bargain (a unifiedGermany), Gorbachev did not try toresolve the matter there in writing. Inthe future, once NATO startedexpanding, he would therefore leave

the Soviet Union’s successors empty-handed when they protested againstNATO enlargement. Later, RussianPresidents would assert that thismeeting had given them assurancesthat NATO would not expand. TheUnited States would remember thismeeting differently…” – veryconveniently.

She, however, acknowledges: “Atthe time of these bilaterals, there is noevidence that the thinking aboutNATO’s future went beyond EastGermany, although such ideas wouldemerge within the year. In separateinterviews, Baker, [Philip D.] Zelikow,and [Robert B.] Zoellick all indicatedthat there were musings at the StateDepartment in the latter half of 1990about the possibility of NATOexpansion, although only in aspeculative way. An internal StateDepartment document, to bediscussed below, hints at theoreticalconversations as early as March 1990,but not at the time of these bilaterals.”Where, then, was the need forGorbachev to seek a writtenundertaking for a move that none hadthought of and one that would exceedthe assurance regarding EastGermany?

Gorbachev had a different vision,which Matlock reported from Moscowon May 1990 – “create a pan-European

security pact instantaneously byputting a united Germany into bothNATO and the Warsaw Pact,simultaneously”. Matlock summarisedGorbachev’s logic as follows: If“Germany can participate withoutdifficulty in the G-7, the EC-12, theNATO-16 and the CSCE-35, whycouldn’t it also accept participation inall or part of the Warsaw Pact politicalframework – an Eastern E-7, so tospeak”.

As a study of the diplomatic record,Sarotte’s book has few equals. GeorgeKennan called NATO’s expansioneastward as a “strategic blunder ofpotentially epic proportions”. Sarotteherself recognises that “the expansionperpetuated the military dividing linebetween NATO and its biggeststrategic threat, Russia, into the postCold War world”, adding tellingly“which did not have to be the outcomeof 1990”. Precisely.

She records: “In the West, whileBonn and Washington publiclyexpressed sympathy for Gorbachev’sreformist goals in 1989-90, theyprivately sensed that they did notreally need to accommodate him. Torepeat what Baker wrote in a summaryof U.S.-Soviet relations: the Russians‘have to make hard choices. We doGorbachev no favours when we makeit easier to avoid choices.’ Bonn andWashington realised that they couldoutmanoeuvre him. The discrepancybetween what Kohl in particularsuggested to Gorbachev in February –that NATO would not move eastwardif the Soviet leader let Germany unite,which Gorbachev then agreed to lethappen internally – and whattranspired afterward created ill will inthe long term.

“In other words, the goal of Bonnand Washington was, as Gates put it,to bribe the Soviets out of Germany,not to set up long-term structures ofcooperation in which Gorbachev andhis successors would be full partners.Gorbachev eventually came to feel thathe had walked into a trap and toldKohl so in those words in September1990. Presumably the Soviet leaderwas also angry at himself for failing to

HELMUT KOHL. HE was theChancellor when the two Germanieswere unified.

THE

HIN

DU

AR

CH

IVES

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


have gotten more out of unification,particularly with regard to NATO,since the issue was such a toxic one forany Soviet or Russian leader. TheClinton administration, seeing howdifficult NATO expansion could be forYeltsin in terms of domestic politics,waited until after the Russian leadersecured re-election in July 1996 beforeenlarging beyond former EastGermany. It also, together with theNATO Secretary General at the time,Javier Solana, organised amultinational conference in Paris inMay 1997 to provide Yeltsin with apublic relations boost. At thisconference, the “Founding Act onMutual Relations, Cooperation, andSecurity between the RussianFederation and NATO” was signed.This Act created a Permanent JointCouncil that included Russia, butneither it, nor its successororganisation, the NATO-RussiaCouncil, ever really lived up toexpectations.

“Russians saw the newrelationship as a counter-intelligenceopportunity. Western policymakersgave Russia only token consultativerights. The window of opportunityclosed. Lacking some kind ofsuccessful Western-Russianconsultation to smooth over thedisagreements, NATO enlargementcontinued to increase tension betweenWashington and Moscow.

“As opportunities for cooperationdwindled in the course ofimplementation, Russian worry aboutNATO enlargement intensified.During the Cold War, Leningrad wasroughly twelve hundred miles [1,931km] away from the nearest border ofNATO. By 2008, the membership ofEstonia meant that the border hadmoved to within a hundred miles [160km] of the city, renamed SaintPetersburg.”

P R O M I S E S B R O K E NAny country would be concernedabout such a development, but Russiawas particularly angry about it. Itinsisted that in implementingexpansion, the United States and the

West had thereby broken theirpromises. The U.S. resented Cuba’sfriendship with the USSR.

Indian academics are not the onlyones to bat on the same side as thegovernment on foreign policy – bar afew exceptions. With the samequalification, American academics areno better; perhaps worse because theyhave better access to information.Sarotte’s gloss is preposterous. InFebruary 1990, she claims, “Bakersuggested in a highly speculative way…that NATO would not expandeastwards.”

But doubts nag her. “Was there nota real opportunity to take advantage ofthe unexpected opportunities andaccomplish more at a pan-Europeanlevel? The eventual outcome of NATOexpansion was already unfolding in1990. But was there some form ofinternational economic support orguidance, other than large handoutsfrom Kohl, that would have eased thetransit of the Soviet Union into thecompany of modern democracies andeconomics in exchange for its consentto peaceful German unification inNATO? Did the West ‘lose’ Russia, anddid it do so as early as 1990…. Between1990 and 2008 the number of Russiannuclear warheads or ICBMs[intercontinental ballistic missiles]was cut almost 70 per cent, and fourthousand of its tanks left Europe….”

The wise former British ForeignSecretary Douglas Hurd did “indeedthink that better alternatives wereconceivable. In 1989-90 there was atheoretical opportunity which won’tcome again, which Obama does nothave, to remake the world, becauseAmerica was absolutely at the pinnacleof its influence and success. Putanother way, ‘you could argue that ifthey had been geniuses, George Bushand Jim Baker would have sat down in1990 and said the whole game iscoming into our hands’. They wouldhave concluded that ‘we’ve got now anopportunity, which may not recur, toremake the world, update everything,the U.N., everything’. And maybe ifthey had been Churchill andRoosevelt, you know, they might have

done that.” But Hurd finds that “theyweren’t that kind of person, neither ofthem. George Bush had famously saidhe ‘didn’t do the vision thing’. In short,they weren’t visionaries, and nor werewe.” Hurd remembers that they playedit safe, which was sensible and indeedhis preference, but that they “may havelet a big opportunity go by”. Hurd wastoo polite to say that Bush and Bakerwere small men.

P R E D I C A M E N T & R E A S O N SF O R I TMatlock, Jr., asks: “How is it that wehave moved, in less than two decades,from the confidence that envelopedAmerica when the Cold War ended,the Berlin Wall came down, andPresident George H.W. Bushproclaimed a ‘new world order’ to thedivision and widespread fear prevalenttoday? The world faces a deepeningrecession; American armed forces arefighting two wars that have lastedlonger than World War-II; the UnitedStates has become the world’s largestdebtor, with a fraying infrastructureand educational system and aneconomy dangerously dependent onimports of energy from some of themost unstable parts of the world.”

Unlike Jesting Pilate, he waits andgives the answer, an answer which our“defence intellectuals” and theircompanions day-dreaming aboutgreat-power status and the“hardliners” would do well to ponder.“There are many reasons for thepredicament we find ourselves in, butone of the most fundamental is ourfailure as a nation to understand thelessons the Cold War and the collapseof the Soviet Union should have taughtus. To judge from the superficiality –sometimes even irrelevance – of muchof our political debate on foreign policyissues, neither the Democratic norRepublican party leadership has aclear idea of what we should havelearned from the Cold War and theway it ended….

“These events rearranged thepolitical map of the world, but toomany American politicians looked atthe end of the Cold War as if it were a

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


AT BRANDENBURG GATE, Berlin, on November 11, 1989, East Germanborder guards at a section of the Berlin Wall pulled down by demonstrators.

LIO

NEL

CIR

ON

NEA

U/A

P/FI

LE

quasi-military victory rather than anegotiated outcome that benefitedboth sides. They seemed to think thatthe disappearance of the Soviet Unionleft the United States as the soleremaining ‘superpower’, able to policethe world – if necessary withoutinternational sanction or the help ofallies. Armchair strategists withillusions of power never seemed tounderstand that the disappearance ofthe Soviet Union decreased Americanleverage over other countries, whichno longer needed U.S. support to fendoff the communist threat. Manypundits inflated the importance ofpotential ‘enemies’ to justifymaintaining American military forcesat a level far higher than needed for thenation’s defence.”

Military might does not necessarilyadd to security, and conciliation is nota vice. “Instead of working to create aninternational order that would addressthe issues most important to its ownsecurity – an order in which power andresponsibility would be shared, localconflicts contained, and weapons ofmass destruction brought underreliable control – the United Statesallowed itself to be distracted. Itinvolved its military forces in struggles

hardly relevant to American well-being, and did so in a way thatengendered the hostility of countrieswhose cooperation was in the long runessential to American security. TheClinton administration’s decision toexpand NATO to the east, rather thandraw Russia into a cooperativearrangement to ensure Europeansecurity, undermined the prospects ofdemocracy in Russia, made it moredifficult to keep peace in the Balkans,and slowed the process of nucleardisarmament started by PresidentsReagan and Gorbachev.”

This touches the basics which evencritics of George W. Bush ignore. Theylament the failure, not the crime andfolly of the interventions inAfghanistan and Iraq.

The author proceeds methodicallyto pinpoint the failures – neglect of adomestic consensus, economics,dependence on foreign soil. “It doesnot help anyone’s understanding thatdebate on these issues is often couchedin terms of conservative versus liberalpolitics…. There is nothingconservative about invading a countrythat has not attacked you, and nothingliberal about devastating anothercountry in the belief that doing so will

promote democracy.” We have similarstereotypes in Indian discourse onforeign policy.

Matlock, Jr., is very well read anddraws on his considerable knowledgeof history as he dissects the tortuouscourse of American policies exposing,en passant, the bogus themes ofrevered pundits, especially the onewho popularised “the unipolarmoment”. The most instructivechapter is the one on “Hubris and itsConsequences”. His sweep is global; avirtual primer to an understanding ofthe present scene for someone like –Barack Obama.

On Iran, for instance, he points outthat the U.S. and Iran’s interests arenot incompatible. He pleads for adiplomatic approach. Matlock, Jr.,concludes: “Ultimately, PresidentObama’s ability to bring about thechanges America needs in its domesticand foreign policy will depend on theAmerican public’s resistance to thefalse myths and the false ideologiesthat led both the Clinton and – to amuch greater degree – the Bush-Cheney administrations astray.Although the United States willpossess for a long time the mostpowerful armed forces in the worldand – for a few more years, at least –the largest economy, it is not and hasnever been a ‘superpower’ in the sensethat it can alone rearrange the world toits liking. As David Sanger put it: ‘Wehave to adjust to a world that Bushcould never accept – one in which newpower centres arise, one in whichAmerica does not always set the rulesand sometimes has to heed rules set byothers.’”

If President Obama can make thatadjustment, replacing attempts toenforce hegemony with efforts tocooperate to achieve commonpurposes, America will emerge bothstronger and more secure than it hasbeen since the beginning of thiscentury.

But Obama’s central tasks are torepair the breach of faith with Russiaand force Israel to settle. He is morelikely to accomplish the first and muchless likely to attempt the second. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


FOUR hundred years ago,Galileo took a telescope thesize of a rolling pin andturned it to the heavens.With that singular act, our

view of the cosmos was dismantledand rewritten. We learned that themoon is not smooth, but craggy andcratered, and that Jupiter has moonsof its own. Observations of Venus re-vealed the planet moving throughphases, overturning in spectacular, notto say heretical, fashion the flawed be-lief that celestial bodies circle theEarth.

E P I C M Y S T E R YAstronomy has progressed in giantleaps ever since, but our ignorance re-mains profound. In the past few dec-ades, we have discerned enough to beconfident that the ordinary matter ofstars and planets makes up a mere 4per cent of the cosmos. The rest is in-visible to us; a mystery of epicproportions.

In the absence of a more enlight-ened description, the missing 96 percent of the universe is badged up as“dark matter” or “dark energy”. Rough-ly a quarter of the universe is darkmatter, a kind of gravitational gluethat lurks around galaxies. A further70 per cent is dark energy that appar-ently drives the expansion of the uni-verse, pushing galaxies away from eachother at ever-increasing speeds. Theword “dark” is shorthand. It meansnone of this stuff can be seen directly:it neither shines nor reflects light. Weknow it only by its actions.

Our ignorance of the cosmos is notdue to lack of effort. Giant telescopesperched on mountaintops stare intothe darkest skies to watch galaxies re-cede and so capture dark energy inaction. In a defunct iron mine half amile beneath Minnesota, equipment

the elements to run experiments to re-veal the goings-on at the galactic cen-tre or the texture of space-time.

Ananthaswamy’s book is a potentantidote to stereotypes. His characters– more technicians and engineers thanscientists – are as tough as old bootsand endure the bleakest of conditionsin pursuit of their calling. Nowhere isthis more apparent than in southernSiberia, where he joins workers whodrive dilapidated jeeps over the frozensurface of Lake Baikal, using planks ofwood to bridge the cracks. Under theice is nearly two kilometres of crystalclear water, but that is not all. Half waydown is a deep-water telescope, whichstares at the lake bed for signs of ghost-ly particles called neutrinos arrivingfrom the heart of the Milky Way.

This is a hard-working and hard-drinking place. The staffers bore holesin the ice and drag equipment up formaintenance at all hours of the dayand night. As an offering to Burkhan,the great spirit of the lake, they flickvodka on the ice before downing therest. When they do retire, it is to bunk-beds in cluttered and ramshackle cabi-ns along the shore, where picturespinned to the walls are of particlesrather than party girls.

For some readers, there may be afew too many cameo roles and linesthat feel extraneous. Occasionally, thetechnical explanations are lengthy, ifnot hard going. But for the larger part,this is a striking tour of modern cos-mology, and the lasting impression is aheartening one. Galileo once com-mented: “All truths are easy to under-stand once they are discovered. Thepoint is to discover them.” More thananything, this book shows that hu-mans have never lost the appetite fordiscovery and for learning the truth ofour place in the universe. �© Guardian News & Media 2010

of exquisite sensitivity waits for thetelltale “ping” of dark matter particles.

In Antarctica, physicists releasevast balloons that loft sensors 36 kminto the sky to collect remnants of anti-matter left over from the big bang. Atthe South Pole, others are drillingholes so deep they could hide the Eiffeltower eight times over. By doing so,they will turn a cubic kilometre of iceinto a detector capable of spotting par-ticles passing right through the planet.

Anil Ananthaswamy, a consultantfor New Scientist magazine, has trav-elled to these and other facilities insome of the most extreme regions onEarth to report back on the humanendeavour to understand the universe.

At heart this book is a travelogue,with a cast of scientists and engineerson hand at every turn to explain thephysics, and occasionally the socio-po-litical backdrop.

The journey begins at the MountWilson Observatory in California. Itwas here in the 1920s that Edwin Hub-ble noticed galaxies tearing away fromus, demolishing our preconceptions ofa static universe and setting the stagefor the big bang. The author flies toMount Paranal Observatory in Chile’sAtacama desert, a place so barren thatworkers pondering dark energy cometo crave the greens and blues of theliving world.

H A R D Y R E S E A R C H E R SThings are no cushier in Antarctica,where Ananthaswamy joins hardy re-searchers in their daily battle against

In search of truthBOOK FACTS

The Edge of Physics:Dispatches from the Frontiersof Cosmology by AnilAnanthaswamy; DuckworthOverlook, pages 336.

At heart, this book is a travelogue, a tour of modern cosmology. B Y I A N S A M P L E

books/in brief

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


SIX platoons of new recruits marched in perfectrhythm and synchronisation into the parade groundof the Assam Rifles Training Centre and School atSukhovi in Nagaland on February 27. The occasionwas the special attestation parade to mark the com-pletion of 46 weeks of gruelling training in bat-tlecraft, weapons handling, jungle-lane shooting and

other specialisations in counter-insurgency oper-ations for them.

The recruits, mostly tribal youth from the north-eastern States, and their parents, who were alsopresent, were greeted by a display of hot-air balloon-ing, breathtaking motorcycle rides, and so on. Theevent was part of the celebrations marking 175 yearsof the Assam Rifles, the country’s oldest paramilitaryforce.

The passing-out parade was reviewed by UnionHome Secretary G.K. Pillai in the presence of theDirector General of Assam Rifles Lt. Gen. K.S. Yada-va; General Officer Commanding, 3 Corps of theArmy, Lt. Gen. N.K. Singh; and other senior officersof the Indian Army and the Assam Rifles.

The Assam Rifles Training Centre and School,situated on a 800-hectare campus about 20 kilo-metres from Dimapur, the Nagaland capital, makesperfect riflemen out of fresh recruits. The trainingimparted is as good as in the Indian Army as far asmilitary expertise, battlecraft, physical fitness, firing

Frontier force

From a semi-military body formedto protect the colonial interests ofthe British in the northeast of India,it has metamorphosed into aregion-specific force that can provideback-up to the Army in the event ofan emergency.

The Assam Rifles, the country’s oldest paramilitary force, is celebrating 175

years of existence. B Y S U S H A N T A T A L U K D A R IN DIMAPUR

A BATCH OF new recruits in front of the Assam Rifles Training Centre and School in Sukhovi near Dimapur,Nagaland, on February 26.

PIC

TUR

ES: R

ITU

RAJ

KO

NW

AR

Spotlight

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


standards, reflexes and reaction shoot-ing are concerned, and the recruits canconfidently go to the battlefield if andwhen called.

The centre, which trains 2,200 to2,400 recruits at a time, is one of thelargest training centres for armedforces in the country.

H I S T O R Y O F T H E U N I T From a semi-military body formed in1835 to protect the tea gardens andother British establishments – by un-dertaking punitive expeditions againstvarious tribes – in the northeasternpart of India, the Assam Rifles hasmetamorphosed into a region-specificforce that has the northeastern regionas its area of operation.

The unit is commanded by an offi-cer of the rank of lieutenant general inthe Army. The headquarters of the Di-rector-General of Assam Rifles(DGAR) is located in Shillong unlike

other central paramilitary forces, all ofwhich have their headquarters in NewDelhi. Apart from this, the Assam Ri-fles has two Inspector-General-levelheadquarters and nine sector head-quarters.

Of its 46 battalions, 31 are forcounter-insurgency operations and 15are for guarding the borders. At pre-sent, all the border-guarding battal-ions are deployed along theIndo-Myanmar border to check infil-tration and the smuggling of arms,ammunition, drugs, fake currencynotes and so on. Arunachal Pradesh,Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram arethe four northeastern States that sharethe 1,643-kilometre-long border withMyanmar.

Colonel L.W. Shakespear’s Historyof The Assam Rifles (published by Fir-ma KLM Private Ltd on behalf of Trib-al Research Institute, Aizawl,Mizoram; first printed in 1929 and re-

printed in 1977) gives an elaborate his-torical account of the paramilitaryforce :

“Excessive annual expenses inkeeping a large force of troops in As-sam, when the country had settleddown and only depredations of wildhill tribes remained to be guardedagainst, caused Government to reviewthe situation from the defensive as-pects and to reduce the military force,which in about 1840 was broughtdown to the four regiments….

“From 1830 the armed Civil Policehad been gradually increased in num-bers, and now, with the reduction oftroops in the province, the first idea ofa “Levy” or Militia body was put for-ward to be a separate force under theCivil Government and apart from thearmed police branch. This proposed“Levy” was to be placed on a betterfooting than the ordinary police,would perform military duties, and

ACROBATICS ON A motorcycle and (right) adisplay of paragliding skills during the specialattestation parade at the Sukhovi school onFebruary 27.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


would replace the troops in certainparts of the border.…

“It was to be a cheap semi-militarybody, clothed like the Civil Police andarmed with the old Brown Bess, but itwas badly paid, though slightly betterthan was the case with ordinary peo-ple… this first unit of this new orga-nisation was definitely raised by MrGrange, in civil charge of the Nowgongdistrict during 1835 and was namedthe “Cachar Levy” with a strength of750 of all ranks, viz., inspectors, headconstables and constables, as theywere called until 1883, in virtue of theirbeing a purely civil force…. This Ca-char Levy thus formed the earliest em-bodied unit of what eventuallydeveloped into the fine force of the fiveAssam Rifles battalions of the presentday.”

The primary role and task of theAssam Rifles is to conduct counter-insurgency operations in the north-

eastern region and other areas, wheredeemed necessary, under the controlof the Army. During times of peace and‘proxy war’, it has to ensure the securityof the India-China and India-Myan-mar borders. In internal security mat-ters, it acts under the purview of theArmy, as the penultimate interven-tionist force of the Central government

when the situation goes beyond thecontrol of other Central paramilitaryforces.

Lt. Col. R.S. Chhettri notes in theGuardians of the North East – The As-sam Rifles 1835-2002: “The whole ofnineteenth century and the first half oftwentieth century is full of myriad ex-peditions launched by the British withAssam Rifles as their spearhead to getcontrol of the entire northeast. TheAssam Military Police in conjunctionwith the Army carried out various ex-peditions. Some of the famous onesare: Kuki Operations of 1880-82 and1917-1919, Manipur Expeditions of1886, Lushai Hills Expeditions of1880-90, 1896 and 1917-19, Abor Ex-peditions of 893-94, 1911-12, ApataniExpedition of 1887 and Mishmi Expe-ditions of 1899-1900, 1911-12.”

During British rule, the forcehelped in the colonial expansion of thecountry’s northeast.

UNION HOME SECRETARY G.K. Pillai gives away medals to Assam Rifles personnel during the parade organised aspart of the 175th anniversary celebrations. Director-General of the Assam Rifles, Lt. Gen. K.S. Yadava, is also seen.

The Sukhovischool is one ofthe largesttraining centresfor armedforces in thecountry.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


After Independence, it has beenplaying a key role in extending India’sadministrative arms to the remotestareas of the region.

Vijaynagar, an inaccessible settle-ment in Changlang district of Aruna-chal Pradesh located at thetri-juncture of India, Myanmar andChina, came up around an Assam Ri-fles post established in 1962 (see Fron-tline, October 9, 2009). Flights ofIndian Air Force (IAF) transport air-craft carry supplies of essentials to its13 villages.

When the flights get cancelled fortoo long, Assam Rifles and IAF per-sonnel share their rations with the res-idents of the settlement, which hasneither road connectivity nor electric-ity supply and is not covered by thepublic distribution system (PDS).

The Assam Rifles also serves as amajor employer for the youth of thisand several such remote settlements inthe region.

The famous anthropologist DrVerrier Elwin, Adviser to the Governorof Assam on Tribal Affairs from 1953-64, described the Assam Rifles as“Friends of the Hill people”, in recog-nition of the roles it played in the re-

NEW RECRUITS ARE given 46 weeks of gruelling training in battlecraft, weapons handling, jungle-lane shooting andother specialisations in counter-insurgency operations.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


gion. “The custodian of law and order,pioneers of every advance into the in-terior, the guardians of our border and,above all, the friends of the hill people.Modestly, without fuss, they havefaced every possible hardship and dif-ficulty and thousands of villagers in[the] wildest areas think of them withaffection and gratitude. May they longcontinue to provide the foundations ofsecurity and order in our border areas,”he wrote.

Unlike other paramilitary forces inthe country, the Assam Rifles has beenbuilt on a military pattern since theBritish period and is now officered al-most entirely by Army officers on dep-utation and officers released by theArmy who are then re-employed asofficers in the paramilitary force.

Although the Assam Rifles wasmeant to be a force specific to thenortheastern region, its troops, be-cause of their vast experience and ex-pertise acquired during decades ofcounter-insurgency operations in thenortheastern States, had been de-ployed in Jammu and Kashmir and inSri Lanka and had won many braveryawards, Lt. Gen. Yadava told Fron-tline. It also took active part in both the

World Wars, the India-China war of1962 and the India-Pakistan war of1971. Therefore, he said, it was consid-ered a fully alert and fully trained forcethat could back the Indian Army in theevent of an external threat.

With the Government of Indiapursuing a ‘look east’ policy in order toachieve closer economic cooperationwith South-East Asian countries, theDGAR foresaw a larger role for hisforce. It might be called upon to pro-tect the huge road, rail and other in-frastructure that will come up in thenortheastern region in the comingyears as a result of the implementationof this policy. The rapidly changingface of the northeastern insurgencyposes tough challenges before the As-sam Rifles. However, the obstacles andchallenges it has overcome in the 175years of its existence have turned itinto a confident force.

In recognition of its confidenceand dedication, the Government of In-dia decided, on February 27, to send agroup of Assam Rifles personnel toquake-hit Haiti under the aegis of aUnited Nations mission in April – ajust tribute to its oldest paramilitaryforce. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


WHEN the Unique Iden-tification Authority ofIndia (UIDAI) waslaunched last year,there was no debate on

its purpose or clarity about what meth-ods it would use to give each one of 1.2billion Indians a 16-digit unique iden-tity (UID) number.

Although its Chairman, Informa-tion Technology (IT) star Nandan Ni-lekani, was given Cabinet rank, theUIDAI was not placed under a Minis-try but within the Planning Commis-sion, a non-statutory body, which hasincreasingly appropriated power with-out public accountability. There wasno discussion on the merits of the pro-ject vis-a-vis other means of identifi-cation for purposes such asemployment guarantee schemes, be-low-poverty-line (BPL) cards, or edu-cation entitlements.

The project has since ballooned in-to a gargantuan scheme. The latestBudget raised its annual allocation 16-fold. It has a new name (Aadhaar) anda logo. Meanwhile, Nilekani has decid-ed that biometric data, including scansof both irises and all 10 fingerprints,will be used for each individual’s UID.Even children between five and 15years will be included “in view of theRight to Education”.

The project is now riding piggy-back on the Census-2011 enumer-ation, which has begun. The Censusdata will be used to prepare a NationalPopulation Register, which will com-pile detailed information on each indi-vidual under 15 heads, includingname, sex, date of birth, parents’ de-tails, present and permanent address,marital status and “if ever married,name of spouse”. It will include bio-metric data. According to Nilekani, the

care, food, National Rural Employ-ment Guarantee Act benefits to thepoor, while eliminating leaks and re-ducing corruption.

Confusion reigns on whether theUID will be mandatory or voluntary.Nilekani insists it will be optional andconcedes that legitimate claimantswill be excluded from benefits if it ismade mandatory. Yet, logically, itscoverage must be comprehensive inorder to be efficacious.

Many government functionariessee the UID as a technological fix tosocial and administrative problems,including leaks in service delivery. Ni-lekani is more ambivalent. He recentlysaid: “It’s early days to say how leak-ages can be plugged. We are workingon it.” The first set of UIDs will beissued between August 2010 and Feb-ruary 2011. By 2014, they will coverhalf the population, with 95 per centaccuracy.

S E C U R I T Y R A T I O N A L EThe UID project looks like a solutionin search of problems. It is sought to bejustified through social and pro-poorfunctions that are well beyond its core-purpose and can perhaps be achievedby equally efficient means.

Its core rationale and primary pur-pose is much less lofty than its extrava-gantly claimed social benefits. It lies insecurity, surveillance and control –traceable to the idea of a mandatoryMultipurpose National Identity Cardfor all Indians recommended by theKargil Review Committee chaired bysecurity hawk K. Subrahmanyam.

This committee greatly exceededits brief and strayed into areas such assecurity and nuclear weapons doc-trines. It seized the Kargil issue todrive a much larger “National Security

UIDAI will act as “the back-office ofthe NPR” by “de-duplicating” the col-lected data to generate the UID. As wesee below, the UID-NPR-Census linkis illegitimate.

There is no clarity about the pro-ject’s purpose and the legitimacy ofone of its principal functions: profilingcitizens from whom the state is poten-tially at risk, to fight terrorism.

All manner of claims are madeabout its virtues and its potential tocontribute to governance: it will createa reliable register of citizens; demar-cate genuine nationals from illegal mi-grants; help the state keep an eye onterrorists, tax dodgers and money-launderers; bring 60 per cent of thepoor who do not have bank accountsinto the banking system; and promotemicrocredit delivery through finger-print-compatible mobile phones.Above all, the project is supposed toenable accurate targeting of health

Questionable linkThe UIDAI’s plan to use population information compiled from Census 2011 data

to generate the UID is fraught with dangers to individual freedoms and rights.

Column

Beyond theObviousPRAFUL BIDWAI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


State” agenda. Home Minister P. Chi-dambaram himself underscored theUID’s security rationale by announc-ing the UIDAI’s establishment in Ja-nuary 2009 as a timely response to theNovember 2008 Mumbai terror at-tacks.

This rationale further unfoldedwith the government announcing aplan to set up a DNA databank and aNATGRID (National IntelligenceGrid) connecting 11 agencies, includ-ing the Intelligence Bureau, the Re-search and Analysis Wing, the CentralBureau of Investigation, the Directo-rate of Revenue Intelligence, the Cen-tral Board of Excise and Customs andthe Central Board of Direct Taxes.

P I V O T A L I N T E R M E D I A R YThe information generated by theNPR will be shared with the UIDAIand NATGRID. The DNA bank andNATGRID are meant to combat ter-rorism and other challenges to inter-nal security. The UIDAI will be apivotal intermediary between numer-ous agencies: the Registrar General(which conducts the Census), the Re-serve Bank of India (which regulatescommercial banks), and telephoneand Internet providers, besides intelli-gence agencies. This is essential if theUID number is to be accepted as aproof of identity. But how reliable isthe UID as the prime, if not sole, in-formation base for security agencies,indeed even the civilian administra-tion? The answer is, not very. Its datawould not be subject to verification.Since nationality is to be recorded “asdeclared” and so transmitted in down-

stream documentation, any number ofnon-citizens could instantly registerthemselves as Indian nationals. Theycould as easily open bank accounts,obtain Indian travel documents, andget jobs as genuine Indians. This obvi-ously has negative security conse-quences. These should not beexaggerated. But the fact is that theUID is full of verification and authen-tification voids.

Even worse, the technology in-volved in it is highly problematic. ALondon School of Economics (LSE)team analysed a similar project con-sidered by the British government. Itconcluded: “The technology envi-sioned… is to a large extent untestedand unreliable. No scheme on thisscale has been undertaken anywherein the world. Smaller and less ambi-tious systems have encountered sub-stantial technological and operationalproblems that are likely to be amplifiedin a large-scale national system.” Theproblems will get immensely magni-fied in India, which is almost 20 timesmore populous than Britain and has arickety administrative system.

The issue of the reliability of IT-based methods is ignored in India,thanks to blind faith in IT. This societyis bewitched by technology but has apoor appreciation of science or thescepticism it counsels. Thus, we refuseeven to countenance problems of datasecurity and vulnerability to manip-ulation of electronic voting machines(EVMs), although these are widely rec-ognised in technologically more litera-te societies – and although ITprofessionals based at the University

of Michigan have successfully hackedinto Indian EVMs (The Times of India,May 21).

The UIDAI’s database will bepreyed upon by numerous agencies,Indian and foreign, commercial andgovernmental, security-related or in-volved in industrial espionage. Re-cently, researchers from the Universityof Toronto exposed a China-basedcomputer espionage network that pil-fered classified documents from In-dia’s Defence Ministry. The“compromised” installations includedthe Directorate-General of MilitaryIntelligence; three Air Force bases; In-dian Military Engineer Services in fourplaces; a Mountain Artillery Brigadein Assam; two Indian military colleg-es; and Indian Embassy computers inKabul, Moscow, Dubai, and Nigeria(see http://nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06cyber.html). Similarly,DNA databases can be corrupted, po-tentially victimising innocent citizens.

Nothing suggests that the UIDAI-related databases will be more securethan military networks. There is, be-sides all these weighty considerations,the question of costs of creating andmaintaining an enormous database of1.2 billion citizens. The LSE study esti-mated that the cost in Britain would be£10-20 billion. The proportionate costin India would exceed Rs.2 lakh crore,enormous for a poor country, where 70per cent of the population has no toi-lets. This means forgoing increasedprovision of public services.

In an interview to CNN-IBN, Nan-dan Nilekani does not deny that “this isa project where we are going into un-

DIB

YAN

GSH

U S

ARK

AR/A

FP

THE PILOT PROJECT of the UIDAI involved collection of biometric data of individuals, including iris information (left)and fingerprints (middle), and photographs (right) in various places.

NAG

ARA

GO

PAL

V. R

AJU

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


charted territories, the technologicalchallenges are immense and one of therisks of the project is technology”(http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/nic/nandannilekani.htm). He alsoconcedes that “I don’t know what theexact figure… is”, but still contendsthat “it is much less than [Rs.1.5 lakhcrore]… by a factor of 10”.

V I O L A T I O N O F P R I V A C YHowever, all these grave problemspale beside the UID’s potential for in-vading citizens’ privacy and violatingconstitutional freedoms. NATGRIDwill provide security agencies real timeaccess into 21 categories of databases –including bank account details, creditcard transactions, driving licences,and visa and immigra-tion records. An intelli-gence official has beenquoted as saying: “Onceyou feed in a person’sname, you’ll get all thedetails about him, acrossall databases.” These in-clude overdue trafficfines and credit card re-cords. “There really willnot be any secrets fromthe state.”

The data collectedwould greatly exceed theneed-based informationthat people furnish to dif-ferent agencies to oper-ate a bank account, obtain a passportor get a ration card. Now all this in-formation will be pooled and made toconverge in a single database availableto hundreds of government depart-ments at the click of a mouse.

This convergence means that thecitizen will lose control over his/herpersonal information. Official agen-cies can use this information to trackcitizens’ movements, bank transac-tions and other legitimate activities.This constitutes an impermissible in-trusion by Big Brother into privacy, afundamental right.

The NPR and NATGRID can trackand profile individuals by studyingtransactions and patterns. The NPR isbeing compiled not under the Census

Act but under the Citizenship Act,1955. The Census Act guarantees con-fidentiality and says personal data is“not open to inspection nor admissiblein evidence”. Such protection is mis-sing from the latter, which makes citi-zen registration “compulsory”. TheCensus Act aims at capturing the pro-file of the population, not individuals.Profiling of individuals is liable to vio-late their freedom, privacy andconfidentiality.

However, strangely, the UIDAIdisowns all responsibility for how itsdatabase will be used. It openly de-clares it is in “the identity business”. Itstates: “The responsibility of trackingbeneficiaries and the governance ofservice delivery will continue to re-

main with the respectiveagencies.” Also, “the UIDnumber will only guaran-tee identity, not rights,benefits or entitlements”.This falsifies the key ra-tionalisation offered forthe scheme: namely, thatthe UID will break thebarriers that prevent thepoor from accessing pub-lic services/subsidies.

The Indian state’s re-cord of abusing technol-ogy and personalinformation is deplora-ble. Take the recent tap-ping of politicians’

conversations by agencies using new“passive interception technology”,which enables them to eavesdrop onall mobile communication within a 2-km radius. This led to an uproar inParliament. But the government isplanning to legalise the use of suchequipment while short-circuiting theprocedure for wiretapping under theTelegraph Act, which requires the ap-proval of the Home Secretary and re-view by a high-level committee headedby the Cabinet Secretary.

The state has always tried to ac-quire extraordinary powers over citi-zens and then abuse them. One onlyhas to recall the record of implementa-tion of our preventive detention laws,TADA, POTA and the more than 200

other extraordinary laws such as thePublic Security Acts of many States tobe gravely concerned at the abuse po-tential. What India needs is not theUIDAI, but effective legislation to de-fend privacy and punish intrusion intoit.

The intelligence agencies are notanswerable to the public and are out-side the purview of the Right to In-formation Act. We can never knowwhat they know about citizens andhow they interpret and use this in-formation. The UID scheme and asso-ciated database-sharing will enablestate agencies to know every minutedetail of a citizen’s life, but the citizenis barred from knowing what theyknow about him/her and what they dowith that knowledge. This is a mockeryof democracy.

This society is already paying heav-ily for the state’s practice of the politicsof suspicion, whose most extreme ex-pression is “encounter killing”. TheNational Human Rights Commission(NHRC) recently admitted that asmany as 2,560 police “encounters”were reported to it between 1993 and2006 – an annual average of 183. Itfound almost half – 1,224, to be precise– to be “fake” or staged, that is, non-judicial executions.

The state behaves particularly ro-guishly when acting in the name ofdefending national security. Experi-ence tells us that the key to fightingterrorism is to treat it as a crime andbring its perpetrators to book whileaddressing its root causes. What isneeded is not more intrusive surveil-lance, nor more sophisticated elec-tronic databases, but good, honestpolicing, patient collection of evidenceand competent prosecution.

To put yet more draconian and un-accountable powers in the hands of thestate is to write the charter of citizens’slavery. The UID project does exactlythat. It must be uncompromisingly op-posed. Or else, we will slide down theslippery slope of strangling people’sfreedoms and rights and using increas-ingly intrusive means to “discipline”citizens. Nothing can harm democracymore grievously. �

NANDAN NILEKANI,UIDAI chief: "Thetechnologicalchallenges are huge."

VIJA

Y K

UM

AR J

OSH

I/PTI

Column

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

THE effects of the present global economic andfinancial crisis, rather than its causes, have been thecentral preoccupation of organisations such as theInternational Labour Organisation in recent times.The ILO, in particular, has focussed on the impact ofthe crisis on populations within the least developedand developing countries, especially children.

The economic downturn, says the ILO, shouldnot become an excuse for diminished ambition andinaction. There is widespread fear that governmentsand international donors would use the crisis as anexcuse to cut back on aid commitments for key socialsectors. According to the World Bank, nearly 40 percent of the 107 developing countries are highly ex-posed to the poverty effects of the crisis.

The ILO claims that its latest global report onchild labour titled “Accelerating Action against ChildLabour” – the third in its series – comes at a criticaljuncture. Four years ago, it says, there was reason tocelebrate as many countries had ratified the twomain conventions on child labour – namely, theMinimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and theWorst Forms of Child Labour Convention of 1999(No. 182). A majority of the countries barring a fewbelonging to the Organisation of Economic Cooper-ation and Development (OECD) promised to actupon the conventions. Interestingly, the global costof eliminating child labour is minuscule compared

Soft battles

South Asian countries account forthe bulk of child labour. But theirbudgetary allocation for educationis much less than that for defence.The success stories of Brazil andChina need to be replicated in thefight against child labour.

Many governments in the developing world lack the will to eradicate child labour,

says the third ILO global report on the deplorable practice. B Y T . K . R A J A L A K S H M I

Reports

A BOY PLOUGHS a field at Araku in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh. The bulk of boysengaged in labour is in the agriculture sector.

K.R

. DEE

PAK


J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


with the public expenditure that gov-ernments have set aside for restoringtheir countries’ financial sectors or thefiscal stimulus packages offered.

The first ILO global report, pub-lished in 2002, was aptly titled “A fu-ture without Child Labour”. The nextreport, which came out in 2006, wastitled “The end of Child Labour –Within Reach”. Its focus was on theelimination of the worst forms of childlabour, and all member-states were todesign and put in place appropriate,time-bound measures by the end of2008. The latest report does not sug-gest anything that can raise optimism.If anything, there has been a decline inthe rate of reduction of children em-ployed in hazardous work.

Until 1999, there was no interna-tional understanding or agreement onwhat constituted hazardous work norwas there any prohibition on employ-ing children to do such work. In 2006,the ILO set an ambitious goal of erad-icating child labour by 2016. At thehalfway mark of that deadline, the goallooks elusive. The concern is all themore as the International Programmeon the Elimination of Child Labourenters its 20th year in another twoyears.

There have been some positives tooin the form of increased tripartisan-ism, greater South-South cooperationand more purposeful social dialogueson child labour, besides a decline inchild labour among girls and in haz-ardous areas. There is growing globalconsensus that education for all is adesired goal.

On the flip side, progress is unevenacross and within countries despite theadoption of global pacts on decentwork. Ratification on paper, unfortu-nately, has not meant a meaningfulmitigation of child labour in absoluteterms. Despite the international clam-our on the issue, governments havebeen found wanting in precisely thoseareas that require higher spending andinvestment in order to prevent chil-dren from entering the workforce.That is one reason why the numbers ofchildren at work and out of school con-tinue to remain high, especially in

South Asia. The ILO report makescandid observations regarding the di-luted commitment of donor countriesas well as the near-stagnation in thedrive to eliminate child labour. In fact,child labour among boys and youngpeople in the 15-17 age group has goneup since 2006.

The report also wonders why in-ternational interest on sub-SaharanAfrica waned despite the second re-port identifying it as a region needingattention. Countries had agreed inprinciple that “working-out-of-pover-ty” policies were required along withsocial protection and employmentmeasures. This, it was felt, would re-sult in sustaining aggregate demandwhile mitigating the impact of the cri-sis on families living in poverty. It isevident that the above has not hap-pened, barring in a very few cases suchas Brazil.

The report reaffirms what it hasbeen saying all along – universal pri-mary education (complete primaryeducation and even two to three yearsof secondary education); the establish-ment of a basic social protection floor;and the creation of productive employ-ment opportunities. It also says cate-gorically that child labour fatigue mustbe prevented and that it is more thepoverty of policy rather than povertyitself that has kept children out ofschool and in child labour.

The success stories of Brazil andChina need to be replicated, it says.Armed with data from over 60 newnational surveys conducted during2004-2008, the report presents a nu-anced picture. There has been, in all, amodest decline in child labour. Butthere is virtually no explanation why215 million children continue to be en-gaged in labour, of them 115 million inhazardous work. The agriculture sec-tor employs the most number of chil-dren.

There has been a 20 per cent in-crease in child labour in the 15-17 agegroup; in absolute terms, the numberhas gone up from 52 million to 62million. There has been an increase inchild labour in the 5-17 age group, too.However, since 2004 there has been a

decrease in the permissible categoriesof work for children. One other posi-tive feature is the decline in employ-ment of girl children in hazardouswork; more girl children were foundemployed in the services sector, whileboys dominated agriculture.

B R A Z I L ’ S E X A M P L E What Brazil did was noteworthy, andthis continues to be quoted in reportafter report on education and child la-bour. In the late 1980s, the govern-ment took a commitment to end childlabour and enacted legislation to pro-tect children and youth. This made onething clear – that child labour and theright to education are incompatible.

In the 10 years that followed, thework activity rate in the 10-17 agegroup fell by 36 per cent; the declinewas sharper in the five-nine age group.The number of working children fellfrom 6,36,248 in 1992 to 2,48,594 in2004. Apart from the government’sown commitment, a high degree of so-cial mobilisation, a tripartite approachinvolving trade unions and employers,a conditional cash-transfer system andthe tactic of keeping children twice aslong in school were some of the mecha-nisms that helped achieve this goal.

K E R A L A M O D E LThe report singles out the Kerala mod-el of social development. It involvedgiving priority for land reforms, foodsecurity, education and public health.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0


Predictably, Kerala’s expenditure onprimary education was much higherthan that of other States.

Quoting from Myron Weiner’s1991 book The Child and the State inIndia: Child labour and education incomparative perspectives, the reportsays that in the 1960s, Kerala wasspending 35 per cent of its revenue oneducation, much more than India’sricher States. By the early 1970s, thework participation rate of children inKerala was 1.9 per cent as opposed to7.1 per cent at the national level. Ker-ala, says the report, can be a model forother States and it can also be part of asub-regional strategy for India andSouth Asia in general.

For the past 20 years, India hastried unsuccessfully to eradicate childlabour. It was one of the earliest signa-tories to the ILO’s International Pro-gramme on the Elimination of ChildLabour, in 1992. But unlike Brazil oreven the State of Kerala, the country asa whole did not accelerate its expendi-ture on education nor did it evolve anyinnovative and long-lasting measuresto guarantee a “way out of poverty”.The promise made in the Constitutionthat the “state shall endeavour to pro-vide within a period of ten years freeand compulsory education for all chil-

dren until they complete the age of 14years” has been extended decade afterdecade. So much so that the commit-ment has been whittled down to the“six to 14” age group and universal edu-cation is now the responsibility of indi-vidual State governments, whichhowever lack the political will to real-ise it.

Interestingly, the ILO notes thateducation by itself is not the sole solu-tion. It has to be matched with thespending on education, especially pri-mary education. This is not to say thatsecondary and higher education be ne-glected.

N O N - F O R M A L E D U C A T I O NThe report is critical of the non-formalsystems of education being pursued inIndia and some other countries. It saysthat non-formal education cannot bean unconditional strategy for the era-dication of child labour; it needs toviewed as a means and is not an end initself.

The second global report had cau-tioned that the non-formal systemscan have unintended consequences forthe formal system, and may fail in itsintention of acting as a transitionmechanism for working children. Inother words, it could become a second-

best rather than a second-chance op-tion.

Consider this. South Asia accountsfor the bulk of child labour in absolutenumbers. Now compare the alloca-tions for education and defence insome South Asian countries. Abouthalf of the low-income countries insub-Saharan Africa spent less than 4per cent of their national income oneducation. The figures were worse forSouth Asia. Bangladesh spent 2.6 percent, Pakistan spent 2.7 per cent andIndia, a growing economy, spent 3.3per cent. India’s budgetary allocationfor education is less than that of someAfrican countries even though the av-erage Indian income is higher than inthese countries.

According to a United NationsChildren’s Fund (UNICEF) report, inthe 10-year period from 1995 to 2005,India devoted 2 per cent of its Centralgovernment expenditure on educationand 13 per cent on defence; Pakistandevoted 1 per cent on education and 20per cent on defence. In contrast, Bra-zil’s expenditure on education wasdouble what it spent on defence (3 percent); and Turkey spent 10 per cent oneducation and 8 per cent on defence.

Given the present situation and thewaning commitment, overall progressis bound to be slow and South Asia willaccount for the bulk of child labour insheer numbers for some more decades.India and Pakistan together contrib-ute to the maximum number of out-of-school children in the world today. Therate of decrease in child labour is notencouraging. The percentage of girlswho are out of school dropped from 58per cent in 1999 to 54 per cent now.

The report says that China, whichhas since 1979 taken more people outof poverty than any other country, hasput most of its children in basic educa-tion.

In September 2009, the ILO in itsreport to the Group of 20 (G-20) na-tions on action taken by countries,concluded that not enough was beingdone on child labour and trafficking.This situation, if left unchecked, willhave disastrous effects on the devel-oped world too. �

TEACHING WITH THE help of videos at a public school in Xapuri in thenorthern Brazilian State of Acra, in the Amazon forest, a March 2008photograph. In the late 1980s, the Brazilian government made acommitment to end child labour and succeeded in realising it.

EVAR

ISTO

SA/

AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 0 F R O N T L I N E

THE ongoing attempts at leg-islating financial reform inthe United States Congressare of great interest to therest of the world. This is not

only because everything the U.S. doesis bound to have ripple effects, but be-cause the proposed regulations mayhave an impact in controlling at leastsome of the rampant excesses and ex-treme volatility that we have experi-enced in financial markets.

One of the most important aspectsof the legislation that has been passedby the U.S. Senate (which still has to bereconciled with the version passed bythe U.S. House of Representatives) hasto do with derivatives markets andtheir effects on commodity trading.

It is now widely accepted that in-creasing financial involvement in pri-mary commodity markets (includingoil, minerals and agricultural prod-ucts) played a significant role in gener-ating or amplifying price volatility inthese markets.

While financial involvement incommodity markets has been growingsince the early 2000s, the impact ofthese players has been particularly evi-dent since early 2007, causing dramat-ic and rapid changes in world prices ofthese goods in both futures and spotmarkets. There were huge increases inmost commodity prices between Janu-ary 2007 and June 2008, followed bycollapses in prices until early 2009,followed by significant increases onceagain until early 2010.

W R O N G S I G N A L SThese price changes had hugely ad-verse effects in the developing world.They sent out confusing, misleadingand often completely wrong price sig-

Global commodity prices have al-ways been volatile to some degree andprone to boom-bust cycles. In the1950s and the 1960s, commodityboards and international commodityagreements were seen as one means ofstabilising global prices. Followingtheir decline from the mid-1970s, andespecially as financial deregulationand innovation became more pro-nounced since the early 1980s, theemergence of commodity futures mar-kets was touted as providing the ad-vantages of such agreements in a moremarket-friendly framework.

There were several features of suchfutures markets that were perceived tobe of value: they allowed for better riskmanagement through hedging by dif-ferent layers of producers, consumersand intermediaries; they enabledopen-market price discovery of com-modities through buying and sellingon exchanges; they were therefore per-ceived to lower transaction costs.

Financial deregulation in the earlypart of the current decade gave a majorboost to the entry of new financialplayers into commodity exchanges. Inthe U.S., which has the greatest vol-ume and turnover of both spot andfuture commodity trading, the signif-icant regulatory transformation oc-curred in 2000.

While commodity futures con-tracts existed before, they were tradedonly on regulated exchanges under thecontrol of the Commodity FuturesTrading Commission (CFTC), whichrequired traders to disclose their hold-ings of each commodity and stick tospecified position limits, so as to pre-vent market manipulation.

Therefore, they were dominated bycommercial players who were using it

nals to farmers, which caused over-sowing in some phases and under-cul-tivation in others.

They created havoc among mineralexporters who were not sure of theprices at which they should sign exportcontracts. Consumers, in particular,were badly affected: while global priceincreases tended to be transmitted(even if not fully) to consumers in de-veloping countries, when global pricesfell there was no such immediate tend-ency.

The continued rise in food prices inmany developing countries has im-pacted on the incidence of poverty andhunger, and become a political issue ofsome importance.

So because of this price instabilityboth the direct producers and the con-sumers lost out. The only gainers werethe financial and marketing interme-diaries, typically large corporations,who were able to profit from rapidlychanging prices.

Regulation is inThe U.S.’ financial reform legislation, when it takes effect, can check the extreme

volatility in financial markets and rein in global commodity prices.

Column

PreoccupationsJAYATI GHOSH

K.K

. MU

STAF

AH

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 0 1

for the reasons mentioned above, rath-er than for mainly speculativepurposes.

D E R E G U L A T I O NIn 2000, the Commodity FuturesModernisation Act effectively dereg-ulated commodity trading in the U.S.by exempting over-the-counter (OTC)commodity trading (outside of regu-lated exchanges) from CFTC over-sight. Soon after this, several

unregulated commodity exchangesopened.

These allowed any and all investors– including hedge funds, pensionfunds and investment banks – to tradecommodity futures contracts withoutany position limits, disclosure require-ments, or regulatory oversight.

The value of such unregulatedtrading zoomed to reach around $9trillion at the end of 2007, which wasestimated to be more than twice the

value of commodity contracts on regu-lated exchanges. According to theBank for International Settlements,the value of outstanding amounts ofOTC commodity-linked derivativesfor commodities other than gold andprecious metals increased from $5.85trillion in June 2006 to $7.05 trillionin June 2007 to as much as $12.39trillion in June 2008.

I N D E X T R A D E R SUnlike producers and consumers whouse such markets for hedging purpos-es, financial firms and other specula-tors increasingly entered the market inorder to profit from short-term chang-es in prices. They were aided by the‘swap-dealer loophole’ in the 2000 leg-islation, which allowed traders to useswap agreements to take long-termpositions in commodity indexes.

There was a consequent emer-gence of commodity index funds,which were essentially ‘index traders’who focussed on returns from changesin the index of a commodity by period-ically rolling over commodity futurescontracts prior to their maturity dateand reinvesting the proceeds in newcontracts.

TRADERS ON THE floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange on May 11. (Below) Paddy being transported nearThrissur in Kerala. Excessive speculation by financial players in commodity markets (including agricultural products)resulted in high volatility in the prices of these goods globally. This in turn sent confusing signals to farmers, causingover-sowing in some phases and under-cultivation in others.

SPEN

CER

PLA

TT/G

ETTY

IMAG

ES/A

FP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 2 F R O N T L I N E

A study by Christopher Gilbert(“Speculative influences on commod-ity futures 2006-08”, UNCTAD Dis-cussion Paper No 197, Geneva) foundthat index traders amplified price vola-tility to the extent of 30 per cent in oiland metal prices and around 15 percent in food-grain prices.

Such commodity funds dealt onlyin forward positions with no physicalownership of the commodities in-volved. This further aggravated thetreatment of these markets as vehiclesfor a diversified portfolio of commod-ities (including not only food but alsoraw materials and energy) as an assetclass, rather than as mechanisms formanaging the risk of actual producersand consumers.

The CFTC estimated that of the$161 billion of commodity index busi-ness in the U.S. markets at the end ofJune 30, 2008, approximately 24 percent was held by index funds, 42 percent by institutional investors, 9 percent by sovereign wealth funds and theremaining 25 per cent by other traders.An official probe by the U.S. Senatefound “substantial and persuasive evi-dence” that non-commercial traderspushed up futures prices, disruptedconvergence between futures and cashprices and increased costs for farmers,the grain industry and consumers.

P L U G G I N G L O O P H O L E SNow, one important proposal in thefinancial reform legislation passed bythe U.S. Senate seeks to plug, at leastpartially, the loopholes that allowedsuch frenzied activity in commodityfutures markets.

It requires previously unregulatedOTC trades to be traded on public ex-changes. This would reverse the effectof the 2000 Act, and enable the CFTCto analyse daily-trade data and deter-mine when traders have exceeded theCFTC’s commodity-specific positionlimits (which provide a percentageceiling for all commodity contractsopen for trade during a specific tradingperiod).

It is estimated that around 90 percent of this market in the U.S. willmove from OTC swaps trading to the

more transparent and capitalised ex-change trading environment for fu-tures contracts.

In addition, another importantamendment brought by SenatorBlanche Lincoln of Arkansas will forcethe banks to spin off their highly prof-itable derivatives trading into entitiesthat would be separate from their com-mercial banking. Section 716 (“Prohib-ition against Federal GovernmentBailouts of Swaps Entities”) willsharply reduce the possibility of tax-payer-financed bailouts for specula-tive activity that does not serve the realeconomy.

This would mean that purely com-mercial banks with guaranteed depos-its would have much lowerdependence on the unregulated andrisky OTC swaps market.

It would also, of course, reduce theprofitability of the big banks that were,through such OTC transactions, ableto hunt with the hounds and run withthe hares.

F I N A N C I A L L O B B YAs expected, this particular provisionis under sharp attack from the financeindustry, with major banks such asMorgan Stanley and Goldman Sachslobbying fiercely to remove it. Both theChairperson of the Federal Deposit In-surance Corporation, Sheila Bair, andthe head of the Federal Reserve, BenBernanke, have spoken out against it,saying it could destabilise the financialsystem. The danger is that during theprocess of “reconciliation” Bills of the

Senate and the House of Representa-tives, which is typically conducted be-hind closed doors, the financiallobbyists may get the motion killed.

That is only one of the dangers.Another is that providing muscle toregulators need not ensure that theregulators do their job appropriately.So even if the CFTC acquires the abilityto control and regulate trading activityin commodity futures, its actions maynot be so effective. For instance, in lateJanuary the CFTC announced that itwould place position limits on oil, nat-ural gas, heating oil and gasoline fu-tures. However, the limits announcedwere so high that, even by the CFTC’sown calculations, they were unlikely toaffect much of the trade.

There have also been argumentsthat such activity will simply move toother players, such as hedge funds,which are expected to be major bene-ficiaries of the move. Or that OTC con-tracts in commodity futures will takeplace increasingly in other financialcentres, in London, Tokyo or even Sin-gapore. But such arguments underes-timate the tremendous influence of theU.S. in shaping financial systems glob-ally. Thus far it can be argued that thisinfluence has essentially been a nega-tive force, but these relatively limitednew regulations, if they actually comeinto play, can force some positivechanges elsewhere as well.

So, just as the deregulation of U.S.markets contributed to excessive spec-ulation and global price volatility, theregulatory reform measures – if theyare defined properly and implementedin the right spirit – can prevent futureepisodes of the very extreme volatilitythat is so damaging to developingcountries.

Of course, this does not in any waymean that the world food crisis is over,or that commodity prices will not con-tinue to behave in a volatile fashionwithout other measures adopted bygovernments. But it may mean somebreathing space from excessive pricevolatility for developing countries,which should help them to get policiesin place to tackle the real problems inthe food economy and elsewhere. �

But providingmuscle toregulators need not ensurethat they dotheir jobappropriately.

Column

BEFORE he retired on May 11, Chief Justice ofIndia K.G. Balakrishnan authored two unanimousjudgments of the Supreme Court Constitution Benchon certain issues pertaining to reservation that haddefied answers for several years.

In the first case, Union of India vs Ramesh Ram,the question was whether candidates belonging tothe reserved category who get recommended againstgeneral/unreserved vacancies on account of theirmerit (without the benefit of any relaxation/conces-sion) can opt for a higher choice of service earmarkedfor the reserved category. The Central governmentand the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC),which conducts the Civil Services Examination(CSE), contended that they could do so under Rule16(2) of the CSE.

This rule states: “While making service alloca-tion, the candidates belonging to the ScheduledCastes [S.Cs], the Scheduled Tribes [S.Ts] or OtherBackward Classes [OBCs], recommended againstunreserved vacancies may be adjusted against re-served vacancies by the Government, if by this proc-ess they get a service of higher choice in the order oftheir preference.”

In the 2005 CSE, for example, there were 26meritorious OBC candidates and one meritoriousS.C. candidate recommended against unreserved va-cancies. If they had been considered for service allo-cation only against unreserved vacancies incompetition with the General Category candidates,they would have got a service of lower choice, be-

cause they figured in the bottom of the General List.Rule 16(2) was a source of disappointment to OBCcandidates in the wait list who could not be selectedbecause the migration of successful OBC candidatesfrom the General List to the Reserved List ruinedtheir chances.

Some of the aggrieved OBC candidates chal-lenged the validity of Rule 16(2) before the CentralAdministrative Tribunal (CAT), Chennai Bench.They contended that reserved category candidateswho made it to the Merit List should be adjustedagainst the general (unreserved) vacancies as thatwould allow more posts for OBC candidates and abetter choice of service for lower-ranked OBC candi-dates. They contended that more meritorious OBCcandidates should be satisfied with a lower choice ofservice as they became general candidates by reasonof their better performance. The CAT upheld theircontention.

The Central government and candidates ag-grieved by the CAT order appealed against it beforethe Madras High Court, which held Rule 16(2) asunconstitutional. The Supreme Court, which heardan appeal against the High Court order, referred thematter to its Constitution Bench. According to thegovernment, the rule helps to preserve and protectinter se merit among the reserved category candi-dates. When a meritorious reserved candidate(MRC) secures a post in the reserved category, thatcandidate is to be treated as a reserved candidate,consistent with his option regarding his status, exer-cised in his application. Since 2005, the number ofMRCs who wished to retain their reserved status hasbeen on the rise.

The Constitution Bench, which comprised ChiefJustice Balakrishnan, the current Chief Justice S.H.Kapadia, Justice R.V. Raveendran, Justice B. Suder-shan Reddy and Justice R. Sathasivam, upheld thevalidity of Rule 16(2). The Bench pointed out that anMRC is at liberty to choose between the generalquota and the respective reserved quota.

The Bench illustrated this with some factual ex-amples. In 2005, an MRC (OBC) attained the 21strank. With respect to his position in the generalmerit list, general category vacancies in the Indian

Bringing clarity

While it upheld the UPSC ruleallowing migration of meritoriousreserved candidates from general toreserved category for better choice ofcadre, in another case it ruled outexclusion of the creamy layer in thecontext of political representation.

Two recent judgments by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court answer

intricate questions raised in the debate on reservation. B Y V . V E N K A T E S A N

The Judiciary/ReservationsJ U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 0 3

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 4 F R O N T L I N E

Administrative Service (IAS) wereavailable, and he occupied the 17th po-sition out of the 45 general vacancies inthe IAS. Thus, he did not need theassistance of Rule 16(2) to get a post ina more preferred service since he wasadjusted against the general list.Therefore, he opted out of the reservedcategory. This was in line with theproposition that when a candidate isentitled to a certain post on his meritalone, he should not be countedagainst the reserved quota.

In contrast, another MRC candi-date obtained 64th rank. At his posi-tion in the general list, he was entitledto a post in the Indian Police Service(IPS) since the general category IASvacancies had been exhausted by can-didates above him in the general meritlist. However, the IPS was his secondpreference; IAS was his first choice. Ifhe were to be considered against thevacancies in the reserved category, hewould be entitled to a post in the IASbecause the 22 IAS vacancies for OBCcandidates had not been filled at thatpoint of time. By the operation of Rule16(2), he was able to join the IAS bymigrating to the reserved (OBC) cate-gory.

The Bench explained that theMRCs, having indicated their status as

S.C./S.T./OBC at the time of filling inthe application, participate in the ex-amination process as reserved candi-dates. After qualifying as per thegeneral standard, they have the optionof opting out of the reserved category.If, however, they are able to secure abetter post in the reserved list, theirplacement in the general list shouldnot deprive them of the same. Rule16(2) thus protects the reserved statusof the MRCs.

The Bench agreed with the Centralgovernment that the rule corrects ananomalous situation where a lower-ranked OBC candidate gets allotted abetter service in comparison to a high-er-ranked OBC candidate simply be-cause he/she performed well enoughto qualify in the general category.

The Bench reasoned that if theMRCs are adjusted against the re-served category vacancies with respectto their higher preferences of cadreand posts and the seats vacated bythem in the general category are fur-ther allotted to other reserved categorycandidates, the aggregate reservationcould possibly exceed 50 per cent of allthe available posts, which would beagainst the Supreme Court’s ruling inIndra Sawhney vs Union of India(1992).

Therefore, the Bench held that theseats vacated by the MRCs in the gen-eral pool would be offered to generalcategory candidates. If, however, anMRC chooses not to avail himself ofthe benefits of his status as a reservedcandidate, then he will be counted inthe general category and the seat va-cated by him in the reserved categorywill automatically go to a candidatewho belongs to the same reserved cate-gory.

The Bench explained that a re-served candidate, by doing wellenough in the examination to qualifyin the open category, did not automat-ically rescind his/her right to a post inthe reserved category. Rule 16(2), inessence and spirit, protected thepledge in the Preamble of the Consti-tution, which conceives of equality ofstatus and opportunity, the Benchsaid.

The Bench reasoned that affirma-tive action measures should be scruti-nised as per the standard ofproportionality. The criteria for anyform of differential treatment shouldbear a rational correlation with a legit-imate governmental objective. In thiscase, a valid distinction has been madebetween MRC and relatively lower-ranked reserved category candidates.

L O C A L S E L F - G O V E R N M E N TIn the second case, Dr K. KrishnaMurthy vs Union of India, the consti-tutional validity of some aspects of thereservation policy prescribed for localself-government institutions was chal-lenged. The petitioners challenged Ar-ticles 243-D (4) and 243-T (4), whichprovide for the reservation of chair-person posts, as well as Articles 243-D(6) and 243-T(6), which enable reser-vation for backward classes inpanchayats and municipalities.

The petitioners argued that theseprovisions, which were inserted intothe Constitution by way of the 73rdand 74th Amendments, were violativeof the fundamental principles such asequality, democracy and fraternity,and, therefore, not amendable.

Counsel for one of the petitioners,Rama Jois, contended that the OBCs

A MUSAHAR WOMAN contestant for the panchayat election campaigning atJamsaut village in rural Patna. A file photograph. The Bench said enhancingwomen’s participation in local self-government had expanded social welfare.

PTI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 0 5

did not need reservation benefits be-cause empirical findings suggestedthat there was already a high degree ofpolitical mobilisation among them.

In its judgment, the Bench com-prising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrish-nan and Justices R.V. Raveendran,D.K. Jain, P. Sathasivam and J.M.Panchal explained that the objectivesof democratic decentralisation werenot only to bring governance closer tothe people but also to make it moreparticipatory, inclusive and account-able to the weaker sections of society.In this sense, reservation in local self-government is intended to benefit di-rectly the community as a whole ratherthan just the elected representatives. Itis for this very reason that there cannotbe an exclusion of the creamy layer inthe context of political representation.

With respect to the chairpersonpositions in the elected local bodies, itwas argued that they were in the na-ture of single posts and reserving themamounted to cent-per cent reserva-tion, thereby offending the equalityclause. The Bench, however, rejectedthis contention, saying the frame ofreference was the entire pool of chair-person positions computed acrosseach tier of panchayati raj institutionsin the State.

The petitioners pleaded that thosewho occupied the reserved chairper-son posts were more likely to cater tothe narrow interests of their owngroups rather than work for the wel-fare of the entire community. TheBench rejected this argument by hold-ing that reservation of chairpersonposts was intended to enable the weak-er sections to assert their voice againstentrenched interests at the local level.The patterns of disadvantage and dis-crimination faced by persons belong-ing to the weaker sections are morepervasive at the local level.

The petitioners also argued thatexcessive reservation placed unfairlimitations on the rights of politicalparticipation of persons belonging tothe unreserved categories. The reser-vation of seats and chairperson postscurtailed the right to vote, the right tosponsor candidates of one’s choice and

the right to contest elections, amongother things. They contended thatsuch restrictions were in conflict withthe principle of universal adult fran-chise provided under Article 326,which also entailed that as far as pos-sible, there should be parity in theweightage given to the votes cast byeach individual.

In this sense, reservation tended todistort the electoral process by givingmore weightage to the voters and can-didates from the beneficiary groups asopposed to those from the general cat-egory, the petition said.

The Bench disagreed with this con-tention by enunciating that the rightsto vote and contest elections were notfundamental rights; they were legalrights that could be controlled throughlegislative means. Right to vote is notan inherent right and it cannot beclaimed in an abstract sense, other-wise, there would be no need for voters’lists to identify eligible voters.

E M P O W E R M E N TResponding to the argument that thereal power is exercised by the malemembers of the families, the Benchreferred to the frequent reports of in-stances where women representativeshad asserted themselves and to in-creasing reports about success storiesof women’s participation in local self-government.

At the level of panchayats, the em-powerment of the elected individual isonly a means for pursuing the largerend of advancing the interests of theweaker sections. Hence, it would becounter-intuitive to exclude the rela-tively better-off persons among the in-tended beneficiaries from thereservation benefits that are designedto ensure diversity in the compositionof local bodies. Such persons may bebetter equipped to represent and pro-tect the interests of their respectivecommunities, the Bench said.

It agreed that excessive and dis-proportionate reservation provided byState legislation could be the subjectmatter of specific challenges before thecourts. However, it held that the iden-tification of backward classes for the

purpose of reservation was an exec-utive function and as per the mandateof Article 340, dedicated commissionsneeded to be appointed to conduct rig-orous empirical inquiry into the natureand implications of backwardness. Itwas also incumbent upon the execu-tive to ensure that reservation policieswere reviewed from time to time so asto guard against overbreadth, it said.

The Bench opined that social andeconomic backwardness did not nec-essarily coincide with political back-wardness. Therefore, not all thegroups that enjoyed reservation bene-fits in the domain of education andemployment needed reservation in lo-cal self-government. The barriers topolitical participation were not of thesame character as barriers that limitedaccess to education and employment,it reasoned.

The Bench stressed that the upperceiling of 50 per cent with respect tovertical reservation in favour of S.C./S.T./OBCs should not be breached.However, it found the petitioners’ ar-guments misconceived as they con-fused vertical reservation with thehorizontal reservation in favour ofwomen to assert that the 50 per centceiling had been breached in some ofthe States. Since one-third of the seatsreserved for S.Cs/S.Ts/OBCs were tobe reserved for women belonging tothe same categories, the seats ear-marked for women belonging to thegeneral category should not be ac-counted for if one were to gaugewhether the upper ceiling of 50 percent had been breached, the Bench ex-plained.

However, the Bench warned thatthe quantum of reservation in favourof backward classes in local bodies ingeneral areas (where there are no ex-ceptional considerations), could notexceed the upper limit of 50 per cent;therefore, some of the States may haveto modify their legislation so as to re-duce the quantum of the existing quo-tas in favour of the OBCs. Exceptionscould be made in order to safeguardthe interests of the S.Ts in the matter oftheir representation in the panchayatslocated in scheduled areas, it held. �

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 6 F R O N T L I N E

JUSTICE Sarosh Homi Kapadia, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, succeeded JusticeK.G. Balakrishnan as the 38th Chief Justice of India(CJI) on May 12. Justice Kapadia, who will be thefirst CJI born after Independence, will have a tenureof two years and four months, as Supreme Courtjudges retire at the age of 65. He is known within thelegal fraternity as a tough judge, and his appoint-ment has aroused high expectations.

Justice Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Courtjudge, hailed Justice Kapadia’s appointment. Hesaid it filled him with hope “that we are on the vergeof an era of constitutional justice”. In a letter to him,Krishna Iyer said: “India is a poor country and pov-erty jurisprudence and social justice must receivehigh priority.” In his reply, Justice Kapadia spokeabout his humble origins, how he started his careeras a Class IV employee and went on to state that hisonly asset was his integrity.

Expressing his resolve to fulfil his obligation tothe Constitution in the matter of achieving the goalof inclusive growth, Justice Kapadia said: “Even as ajudge of the Supreme Court I have used my knowl-edge of accounts and economics for the welfare of thedowntrodden, including tribals and workmen….”

However, the CJI’s views on public interest liti-gation (PIL) have caused disquiet among those whoconsider it an effective method to achieve socialjustice. He said on his first day in office, while hear-ing a PIL as part of a three-judge Bench: “Huge costwill be imposed for filing frivolous PILs.”

On May 15, while hearing another petition, hesaid: “PIL petitioners have been moving the courtsstraightaway without even bringing the problem tothe notice of the authorities. And the courts have

been entertaining these PILs, virtually taking overthe function of the authorities. We will not allowsuch bypassing of the authorities to take place anymore.” In this case, a non-governmental organisa-tion (NGO) had sought the implementation of roadsafety measures by the Andhra Pradesh government.The CJI sought to know whether the NGO had is-sued notice to the authorities concerned before ap-proaching the Supreme Court.

Some may wonder whether the executive has tobe reminded about its duty to implement road safetymeasures and whether such a reminder serves anypurpose. The CJI’s views could trigger a debate onthe PIL and whether it should be the last option. Thegeneral perception is that waiting for the executive toshow sensitivity to a grievance would mean letting itaggravate.

It will be of interest to examine the CJI’s views onPILs in the light of the Supreme Court’s judgment inthe Balwant Singh Chaufal case, delivered on Janu-ary 18. In this case, the High Court had directed theUttarakhand government to decide whether the ap-pointment of a person who was more than 62 yearsold as Advocate General of the State was valid or not.The law on this issue is settled: there is no upper agelimit for a person to be appointed to the post.

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and said:“The State of Uttarakhand was a part of the State ofU.P. [Uttar Pradesh] a few years ago. In the State ofU.P., a large number of Advocate Generals appoint-ed were beyond 62 years of age at the time of theirappointment. The petitioner, a local practising law-yer, ought to have bestowed some care before filingthis writ petition in public interest under Article 226of the Constitution…. In our considered view, it is aclear case of the abuse of process of court in the nameof the public interest litigation. …The petitionerought to have known that the controversy which hehas been raising in the petition stands concludedhalf a century ago and by a Division Bench judgmentof the Nagpur High Court and was approved by aConstitution Bench of this court.” The SupremeCourt imposed an exemplary cost of Rs.1 lakh on therespondents for filing the frivolous PIL before theHigh Court.

In public interest

Some judges advocate judicialrestraint while others favour anuanced approach to theadmissibility of PIL petitions onthe basis of the present guidelines.

The strong views of the new CJI, Justice S.H. Kapadia, on frivolous public interest

litigation sharpen divisions within the judiciary and outside it. B Y V . V E N K A T E S A N

The Judiciary/PIL

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 0 7

The Bench then traced the evolu-tion of the PIL in India. In the firstphase of its evolution, the court tried topreserve and protect the fundamentalrights of the marginalised and the de-prived and poor sections of society byrelaxing the traditional rule of locusstandi and broadening the definitionof aggrieved persons. The SupremeCourt and High Courts earned greatrespect and acquired great credibilityin the eyes of the public because oftheir innovative efforts to protect andpreserve the fundamental rights of

people belonging to the poor and mar-ginalised sections.

The second phase began sometimein the 1980s and was marked by in-novation and creativity of the courts,where directions were given to protectthe environment.

Unfortunately, of late, it was in-creasingly felt that the method was be-ing abused blatantly to file petitionswith oblique motives. “We think timehas come when genuine and bona fidepublic interest litigation must be en-couraged, whereas frivolous public in-terest litigation should bediscouraged,” the court said and laiddown guidelines for High Courts onPILs. The Supreme Court directed allHigh Courts to frame and notify theirrules in this regard.

The Supreme Court is monitoringthe implementation of its directives,and the case came up for hearing onMay 3 before the Bench of Justice Dal-veer Bhandari and Justice Gyan SudhaMisra. The Bench found that someHigh Courts had responded and otherssought time to do so before the nexthearing on July 19.

G U I D E L I N E SIn its January 18 judgment, the Su-preme Court Bench, comprising Jus-tices Dalveer Bhandari andMukundakam Sharma, laid down thefollowing guidelines to be followedwhile admitting PILs:

The courts should prima facie ver-ify the credentials of the petitioner be-fore entertaining a PIL;

prima facie be satisfied about thecorrectness of the contents of the pet-ition;

be satisfied that substantial publicinterest is involved;

ensure that the petition that in-volves larger public interest, gravityand urgency is given priority;

before entertaining a PIL, ensurethat it is aimed at the redress ofgenuine public harm or public injury;

ensure that there is no personalgain, private motive or oblique motivebehind filing the PIL; and, finally,

ensure that petitions filed by busy-bodies for extraneous and ulterior mo-

tives are discouraged by imposingexemplary costs or by adopting similarnovel methods.

Some observers have suggestedthat the judgment is silent on the needfor such uniformity in the SupremeCourt in entertaining PILs. Further,such a guideline can be seen as judiciallegislation being implemented in asphere where there is no law. In a sys-tem where there is a clear separation ofpowers, the sphere of legislationshould be left to the legislature, ob-servers say.

They wonder whether it would befeasible to verify the credentials of pet-itioners, considering the volume of liti-gation in India. Regarding theguideline that the court should primafacie satisfy itself as to the correctnessof a petition, it is pointed out that everypetition is supported by an affidavit ofthe petitioner. In case a false statementis made therein, he or she is liable to beprosecuted for the offence of perjury.

The guideline that the court shouldbe satisfied that substantial public in-terest is involved has also led to someconcern. In most cases, this can bedone only when the court hears theparties on merits. Imposition of ex-emplary costs on frivolous petitionerstoo, observers say, can only be doneafter the court hears the parties. In theBalwant Singh Chaufal case, the pet-ition might well have been a frivolousone. The High Court did not find it soand the Supreme Court decided it to beso only after hearing the parties con-cerned. If High Courts are to filterPILs according to their discretionarystandards of frivolity, it would start adisturbing trend and undo some of theachievements of the PIL movement.

C O N F L I C T I N G T E N D E N C I E STo many, the CJI’s view conceals thefact that there are two conflicting tend-encies among Supreme Court judgeson the question of PILs. In Universityof Kerala vs Council of Principals ofColleges, Kerala, decided on Novem-ber 11, 2009, reported at (2010)1 SCC353, Justice Markandey Katju andJustice A.K. Ganguly have referred thequestion of judicial legislation by

JUSTICE SAROSH HOMI Kapadia,the Chief Justice of India, whoassumed office on May 12.

PRAK

ASH

SIN

GH

/AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 0 8 F R O N T L I N E

courts in PILs to a larger Bench. Thequestions referred to that Bench are

1. Whether the court by an interimorder dated September 22, 2006, canvalidly direct implementation of theLyngdoh Committee’s Report (onholding of student union elections incolleges and universities);

2. Whether the order dated Sep-tember 22, 2006, really amounts tojudicial legislation;

3. Whether under the Constitutionthe judiciary can legislate, and, if so,what is the permissible limits of judi-cial legislation. Will judicial legislationnot violate the principle of separationof powers broadly envisaged by theConstitution;

4. Whether the judiciary can legis-late when in its opinion there is apressing social problem of public in-terest or only make a recommendationto the legislature or concerned author-ity in this connection;

5. Whether Article 19(1)(c) andother fundamental rights are being vi-

olated when restrictions are beingplaced by the implementation of theLyngdoh Committee report withoutauthority of law; and

6. What is the scope of Articles 141and 142 of the Constitution? Do theypermit the judiciary to legislate and/orperform functions of the executivewing of the state?

The CJI is yet to constitute a Con-stitution Bench to consider these ques-tions. However, the divisions withinthe Supreme Court on the question ofPILs are becoming sharper, with somejudges openly advocating restraint andothers articulating a nuanced ap-proach to the admissibility of PILs onthe basis of guidelines that are debat-able.

But there are certain public inter-est petitions that do not require leng-thy hearing to decide whether they arefrivolous. On May 5, a PIL petitionersought the Supreme Court’s directionto introduce the text of the Constitu-tion in primary classes. He argued that

the Constitution should be learnt asquickly as possible as it was the foun-dation of all laws in the country. An-other petitioner wanted the court todirect the Union to repeal laws, in-cluding the Indian Penal Code, whichthe colonial British wrote for the coun-try as, in his view, only those lawspassed by Parliament should continue.Another petitioner wanted total aboli-tion of paper currency. No doubt thesedeserved to be dismissed, and indeedwere rejected, at the entry stage.

Former Supreme Court Judge Jus-tice P.B. Sawant once said a judgeshould develop a strong sense of smell.If something stinks, then he must beextra careful. It is the right judicialinstinct and the skill of the judiciarythat will stop the misuse of PILs andrestore to them their pristine and use-ful character. Any amount of guide-lines, laws and rules in this regard canonly lead to suspicions regarding thejudiciary’s real intent with regard toPILs. �

IN A PIL petition filed by lawyer M.C. Mehta, the Supreme Court held that air pollution caused by vehicular emissionsviolated the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. Here, outside a compressed natural gas (CNG) station inNew Delhi on June 7, 2001, after the court made it compulsory for all commercial vehicles to run on CNG.

ARK

O D

ATTA

/AFP

The Judiciary/PIL

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 0 9

LATEST reports from theUnited States point to amarked drop in crime. TheUniform Crime Report(UCR), prepared annually

by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI), states that in 2009 both violentand property offences dipped by nearly5 per cent. This phenomenon of de-clining crime has been maintained forthree consecutive years, bucking thetrend in most parts of the globe.Viewed against the backdrop of theU.S.’ troubled economy and the coun-try’s excruciating levels of unemploy-ment, these statistics have perplexedcriminologists who placed excessivefaith in the causal link between eco-nomic stress and deviance.

The UCR is a fairly reliable docu-ment based on returns volunteered bymore than 10,000 police departmentsall over the U.S. The police in the U.S.are generally known for their aversionto suppressing reported crime. The na-tionwide computerised 911 telephonicemergency service also makes it diffi-cult for any dishonest or slack police-man to disregard a complaint. Theproblem, however, is that crime ismore often a matter of public percep-tion than of numbers. It is also a sub-ject that yields itself to inanegeneralisations. No amount of rigor-ous statistical analysis will convincepeople that the crime rate is falling.Such claims are often looked upon assophistry. This is why no single theoryof crime ever holds water for long.

Fluctuations in the crime rate arehard to explain. This is an area thatbaffles the most profound criminol-ogist. Contrary to popular belief, a badeconomy does not necessarily triggercrime. Several other factors determineits rise or fall. A truism that is ignored

twined and bring up issues of immedi-ate prevention and long-termstrategies to raise a new generationthat is not inclined towards crime butactually has a stake in good conduct.

According to Philip Cook of DukeUniversity and John MacDonald ofthe University of Pennsylvania (bothin the U.S.), who spoke at the RESconference, there are some immediatemeans by which a high-crime regioncan get substantial relief. These in-clude target-hardening, which makesproperty that is vulnerable to crimedifficult to plunder.

Such targeting takes the form ofburglar alarms, stronger buildingstructures, street-view illumination ofpremises to reduce opportunities forclandestine entry, and so on. Cookpointed out how in spite of the explo-sion in the numbers of automobiles onthe road, car thefts had come down.Steering locks, engine immobilisersand intelligent tracking systems con-tributed to this situation.

Ben Vollaard of Tilburg Universityin the Netherlands, in his presentationat the conference, highlighted howstrict building regulations could makepremises nearly inviolable; for in-stance, a new Dutch building code en-sures that buildings constructed after1999 are more secure than those builtearlier. This code has made it manda-tory for buildings to have a superiorlocking systems and stronger windowsand doors. There is actually no limit toinnovation in the area oftarget-hardening.

Cook also said focussed policing inareas with valuable property couldmake it difficult to commit crime. Hebelieves the creation of Business Im-provement Districts (BID), which arenon-profit organisations born out of

by even the most learned scholars andpractitioners is the need for an inter-disciplinary approach to explain, atleast partially, the changing pattern orincidence of crime.

The recent annual conference ofthe Royal Economic Society (RES)held at the University of Surrey in En-gland, interestingly, devoted sometime to crime and allied phenomena. Iam yet to come across any Indian econ-omist of repute discussing the eco-nomic scene and correlating it to thegrowing trends of violent crime in In-dia. My hunch is that many economistsat home consider it infra dig to dwellon crime, which is, after all, the do-main of the less intellectually endowedpoliceman and casual scholar at somelowly universities. This perhaps ex-plains why India has produced so fewpapers of worth in the area.

The REC conference analysed twothemes: What prevents crime? andWhat is the incentive to stay away fromcrime? These questions are inter-

Crime calculationsThe many ways to keep the crime rate down and to prevent people from

committing crime.

Law and OrderR.K. RAGHAVAN

Column

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 1 0 F R O N T L I N E

Column

the collective efforts of business andindustry and offer quality security ser-vices, can help protect commercialproperty. Security guards hired byBIDs are not distracted by other policechores and hence are able to react atonce to acts of crime. BIDs cost muchless than the regular police because oflower wages.

The city of Los Angeles has had asuccessful experiment in utilisingBIDs. A California law of the 1990sactually made it obligatory for busi-nesses to come together to create aBID. This may not appeal to the aver-age citizen, who is forever sceptical ofwhat are seen as half-measures to cutdown on crime. Turning to the funda-mental question of how to wean peopleaway from crime, there have been his-toric theories that were once heresiesbut are now viewed with greaterrespect.

We have no doubt come a long wayfrom the Babylonian King Hammura-bi’s code of “an eye for an eye and atooth for a tooth”. But there are still asizeable number of people who believein deterrence if not in retribution.Shades of this were seen in the Indianpublic’s response to the death penal-ties imposed on Afzal Guru and AjmalKasab. The majority believe that cap-ital punishment is the most appropri-

ate punishment for these twoconsidering the gravity of their crimes.No one, however, can bet that futureAfzal Gurus and Ajmal Kasabs will bedeterred by the death penalty.

The famous 18th century Italianeconomist Cesare Beccaria, who acci-dentally strayed into penology, spokepersuasively against capital puni-shment. His revolutionary piece, “AnEssay on Crimes and Punishments”,pointed out that punishment shouldbe based on economics, namely, itshould outweigh the benefit derived bythe criminal in question.

According to him, people make arational choice when deciding to com-mit a crime, and do so only after mak-ing sure that the risks involved arelower than the benefits derived. Thiscost-benefit analysis precedes a crime.In Beccaria’s estimate, any penaltythat exceeds the benefit that an offend-er derives from his deviance is a wasteof public resources.

Consider for a moment the enor-mous investment that a country likethe U.S makes on new prisons. Theauthorities seem blind to the well-ac-cepted maxim that prisons deter only afew. Criminologist after criminologisthas pointed out how prisons lock upmany people who pose no threat at allto society and who are incarcerated not

because they had caused bodily harmto others but because they stole or oth-erwise violated a law that preachesgood conduct. This is true of everycountry, and in my own experience, Iknow how many undertrials languishin Indian jails awaiting sentences fortrivial transgressions of the law. Thereis undoubtedly some rationale in jail-ing persons when there is a danger ofviolent crime. But the objective shouldbe one of containing violent crimerather than offences that are merely aslight to the victims. This is an easilycomprehensible analysis of the short-comings of the criminal justice systemas it exists. But not many in govern-ment will buy it for sheer reasons ofpolitical expediency.

If in the ultimate analysis deter-rence does not work, what else willkeep crime low? This question hastriggered many theories, one of whichis to enlarge educational opportunitiesto the poorest in the community. I amconvinced that the rate at which Indiais expanding the chance for every childto go to school, the country shouldhave a lot less crime in the decades tocome. This is very comforting.

A paper presented at the REC con-ference by Stephen Machin of the Uni-versity College London (UCL) withtwo others supports the thesis that thelonger the youth stay in school, the lesslikely they will be to commit a crime oncompletion of their studies. The arith-metic is that an extra year of educationreduces property offences by 1 to 2 percent. This finding resonated with a pa-per presented by Lance Lochner of theUniversity of Western Ontario, Cana-da, and Enrico Moretti of the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley.

There are immense possibilities tomake the study of criminology morerelevant to contemporary society. In-dia needs to catch up with the U.S. andthe United Kingdom, in particular, inmaking its research more rigorous andquantitative. The Home Ministry hasto ensure this through imaginativefunding to institutions of repute andmonitoring of projects. Nothing elsewill enhance our credibility as a nationthat has faith in applied research. �

A POLICE DEPARTMENTcanine officer patrolling a subway at GrandCentral Station, New York. Focussed policing can make it difficult forpeople to commit crimes.

BEB

ETO

MAT

THEW

S/AP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1 1

THE assassination of Madan Tamang, presidentof the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL), al-legedly by members of the Gorkha Janamukti Mor-cha (GJM), in Darjeeling, West Bengal, hasreawakened memories of the bloodshed that accom-panied the Gorkhaland agitation in the mid-1980s.The GJM leadership has denied any hand in thekilling and demanded a Central Bureau of Investiga-tion (CBI) inquiry. However, the spontaneous out-burst of grief and condemnation following themurder is threatening to present, for the first time, aserious challenge to the authority of the GJM. Ta-mang was a veteran campaigner for a separate Gork-

Storm in the hillsThe murder of Madan Tamang, ABGL president, allegedly by GJM members, has

sparked a storm of protests in the Darjeeling hills. B Y S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y

The States/West BengalPT

I

DIP

TEN

DU

DU

TTA/

AFP

MADAN TAMANG,PRESIDENT of theAkhil BharatiyaGorkha League, whowas murdered by amob on May 21. (Left)The funeralprocession inDarjeeling on May 24.

Tamang was a veteran campaignerfor a separate Gorkhaland State and a strong critic of the GJM. The spontaneous outburst of griefand condemnation has, for the first time, challenged the authorityof the GJM.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 1 2 F R O N T L I N E

haland State and a strong critic of theGJM. On the morning of May 21, at theClub Side area of Darjeeling town, Ta-mang was organising a rally to markthe 68th anniversary of the establish-ment of the ABGL when over ahundred persons armed with khukris(knives traditionally carried by Gork-has) and stones stormed the areastabbed him repeatedly. The attackwas so sudden that those present, in-cluding police personnel on duty,could react only after Tamang felldown mortally wounded. He suc-cumbed to injuries soon after.

K.L. Tamta, Inspector-General ofPolice, North Bengal, told Frontline:“This is the handiwork of the GJM.The GJM attacked and killed MadanTamang.” GJM supremo Bimal Gu-rung, however, denied the charge andreportedly stated that the incident wasa “conspiracy” of the State governmentand the ABGL to tarnish the GJM’simage and break the unity of the Gork-ha people.

The State government has ordereda Criminal Investigation Department(CID) probe into the incident.

F I R A G A I N S T G U R U N GIn the FIR lodged by ABGL generalsecretary Laxman Prasad, 13 top GJMleaders have been named in connec-tion with the murder. They includeBimal Gurung, his wife Asha Gurung,GJM general secretary Roshan Giri,Harka Bahadur Chhetri and BenoyTamang. Even as the West Bengal gov-ernment announced that those foundguilty in connection with the murderwould not be spared, the GJM chiefdared the government to arrest even asingle party leader or activist.

“I will sit on an indefinite hungerstrike if any of my men are held. Wehave condemned the murder. If thepolice falsely implicate us, we willlaunch a fiery agitation,” he said.

The GJM’s alleged involvement inthe murder may prove to be a majorsetback to its supremacy in the hills.Since 2007, after dethroning SubashGhising and his Gorkha National Lib-eration Front (GNLF), which spear-headed the Gorkhaland agitation in

the 1980s, and calling for a fresh ag-itation for a separate State, it has ruledthe hills virtually unchallenged. Itsprogrammes and policies are almostunquestioningly accepted by the peo-ple.

The silencing of one of the mostrespected voices of dissent has come asa blow to the GJM’s image. Internallytoo, the party has alienated a numberof senior and dedicated members, aswas apparent from the spate of resig-nations that followed the killing.Among the first to resign “in protestagainst Tamang’s murder” was AnmolPrasad, a senior leader and a memberof the party think tank. He was alsoone of the representatives of the partyin the first four rounds of tripartitetalks with the Centre and the Stategovernment.

Several other senior members ofthe party followed suit, including Har-ka Bahadur Chhetri, the GJM leaderfrom Kalimpong, and Amar Lama.Chhetri and three others subsequentlywithdrew their resignations.

A S T R O N G V O I C EThough the ABGL was not a majorforce in the Darjeeling hills or in theGorkhaland agitation, Madan Ta-mang, 62, was a respected figure.

He entered politics in the 1970s asthe head of the youth wing of theABGL. Later he broke away from theABGL to join Pranta Parishad andworked closely with Ghising, who wasthen yet to form the GNLF. However,the two parted ways when Ghising,

heading the GNLF, launched hisbloody agitation for a separate State ofGorkhaland. Tamang formed theGorkha Democratic Front in the 1990sbut returned to the ABGL in 2004.

Tamang was known as much forhis oratory and outspokenness as forhis commitment to the cause of Gork-haland and democracy. When BimalGurung announced the formation ofthe GJM and ended by force the un-challenged 21-year-long reign of Ghis-ing, Tamang initially welcomed it butsoon fell out with the GJM as he feltthat the latter was ignoring the opin-ions of the other parties in the region.

Subsequently, as the GJM’s powerin the hills became absolute, his wasone of the few voices of opposition, justas it had been during the GNLF’s rule.Tamang was a hardliner, as far as theissue of Gorkhaland was concerned,and his conflict with the GJM came toa head earlier this year, when the latterproposed the setting up of an interimadministration in the region until thedemand for Gorkhaland was conced-ed.

According to Tamang, the propos-al was akin to Ghising’s DarjeelingGorkha Autonomous Hill Council andidentical in its betrayal of the promisefor a Gorkhaland State.

Tamang was among those leaderswho formed recently the DemocraticFront, an anti-GJM coalition involv-ing seven parties, including the Bhara-tiya Janata Party (BJP) and theCommunist Party of RevolutionaryMarxists (CPRM), a breakaway fac-tion of the Communist Party of India(Marxist). The stated goal of the frontis to “fight for democracy” in the hills.

Less than a week before his mur-der, he had met West Bengal GovernorM.K. Narayanan and sought his in-tervention for “restoring democracy”in the region. The Governor, who waspresent in Darjeeling at the time of theassassination, condemned the killingand expressed his “deep sense of shockand sorrow”. He said the incidentcould only be regarded as “an attack ondemocratic forces”. Tamang’s widow,Bharati, has taken his place as thepresident of the ABGL.

The silencing of one of themost respectedvoices of dissenthas come as ablow to theGJM’s image.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1 3

On the day of the assassination,shops and business establishmentsvoluntarily closed down, promptingthe GJM to declare a bandh the follow-ing day. “The candlelight vigils and si-lent condolence processions attendedby thousands of citizens were perhapsthe strongest indictment of the preva-lent situation here and those whobrought it about,” a resident of Dar-jeeling told Frontline. A protest marchby the citizens of Darjeeling on May 22began with barely a hundred people,but soon attracted over three thousandparticipants.

V O I C E S R A I S E DOn May 24, the day of the funeral, thesimmering tension of the previous twodays erupted in a display of rageagainst the GJM as thousands joinedthe funeral procession. Chants of “Bi-mal Gurung Quit Darjeeling” could beheard from the crowds, and postersand banners of the GJM were torndown and trampled upon.

“This is the first time since theGJM assumed power in the hills thatthe common people have raised theirvoices against it. For so long everybodywas afraid of them, but all of a suddenpeople seem to have lost their fear,” aparticipant in the procession toldFrontline.

The following day, in view of Gu-rung’s imminent arrival to Darjeelingtown from Kalimpong and the mount-ing tension in the region, the policeenforced Section 144 of the CriminalProcedure Code to pre-empt any flare-up. Though Gurung and his huge con-voy entered Darjeeling in flagrant vio-lation of the prohibitory order, heencountered violent protests fromCPRM activists and local residents onthe way.

Women lay in front of the vehiclesto stop them from proceeding, crowdsscuffled with Gorkhaland Personnel (atrained special force created by theGJM to enforce its writ in the hills) andtried to break through the protectiveline of police and IRB (India ReserveBattalion) personnel and attack pass-ing GJM vehicles.

Ironically, it was only with the help

of the police that the convoy – alongwith Gorkhaland Personnel on thesideboards – entered Darjeeling town.Gurung then addressed a gathering ofGJM supporters.

The unprecedented protestsagainst the GJM may well be the be-ginning of a change in the politicaldynamics in the Darjeeling hills. LikeGhising before him, Gurung enjoyedabsolute power in the hills. Eventhough various sections of the pop-ulace did not subscribe to his style, hadgrown tired of the bandhs he repeated-ly called, and resented the politics ofintimidation, they quietly accepted allthis. The resentment that was buildingagainst the GJM’s autocratic ruleseems to have found an unexpectedoutlet following the assassination ofTamang, who, though respected, neverhad a mass support base.

According to State Municipal Af-fairs and Urban Development Minis-ter Ashok Bhattacharya, a CPI(M)heavyweight of Darjeeling district, therecent events indicate that the GJM

has lost the support of the masses. “Thelocal people now want restoration ofpeace and democracy before address-ing the issue of statehood. The peoplehave been losing confidence in theGJM leadership but were too afraid tovoice it. Madan Tamang’s was a coura-geous voice that spoke out against thisand he too has been silenced. The GJMhas lost the mandate of the people ofDarjeeling, and they do not want to berepresented by the GJM in the tri-par-tite talks; the State government cannotignore the sentiments of the people,”he told Frontline.

Roshan Giri of the GJM, however,dismissed this view. “How can anyonethink that the GJM will be margin-alised in the hills? Did you not see thehuge crowd that gathered in Darjeel-ing town to greet us on our arrival? Allthese are rumours that are beingspread to weaken the Gorkhalandmovement,” he told Frontline. He wasequally dismissive about the protestsoutside Darjeeling town. “Those werejust a few CPRM supporters, and weallowed them to agitate,” he said.

W H O A F T E R G J M ?Even if it is a little too early to write offthe GJM as the principal political forcein the Darjeeling hills, it has emergedclearly, that its authority has beenquestioned, not by another politicaloutfit, but by the people at large.

So far, the Gorkhaland movementhas not seen any collective leadership.Whether it was Ghising or Bimal Gu-rung, politics in the last 25 years in thehills has followed a pattern – a single-party dictatorial rule that brooks nodissent. For all of Gurung’s expostula-tions that his is a “Gandhian” move-ment, the last two years have beenreplete with violence, both in the hillsand in the foothills.

If the GJM’s power is indeed on thewane, then it remains to be seenwhether there is a strong enough al-ternative to take over the reins from it.There is little chance of a change over-night, but the GJM may find it difficultto stamp out the spark of dissent, espe-cially when it has come from the mass-es. �

GJM SUPREMO BIMAL Gurung. Theprotests following Tamang’s murderseem to be an outlet for built-upresentment against the GJM’sautocratic rule.

ASH

OK

BH

AUM

IL/P

TI

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 1 4 F R O N T L I N E

RICE at Rs.150-200 a kilogram, a liquefied pet-roleum gas (LPG) refill at Rs.2,000, petrol at Rs.200a litre, and diesel at Rs.150 a litre – this is a samplelist of the prices of essential commodities in thenortheastern State of Manipur now. Even if one canafford to pay such exorbitant prices, there is no hopeone can buy these essentials. Often they are out ofstock.

In Imphal West, only one fuel pump has beenallotted petrol and diesel while the district has thou-sands of buses, including school buses, and otherprivate vehicles. Some private schools have re-mained closed, while the attendance in governmentschools remains thin. Hospitals and pharmacies arerunning out of life-saving medicines. The non-avail-ability of gas has meant that surgical operationscannot be conducted in hospitals. The Central gov-ernment-run Regional Institute of Medical Sciences(RIMS) has had to turn away hundreds of patients inneed of surgical operations. The list of woes isendless.

Manipur is under siege, as it were. An economicblockade of National Highways 39 and 53, the life-lines of the landlocked State, has been choking it formore than a month now, and no one knows when itwill end.

The blockade is enforced by the All Naga Stu-dents’ Association, Manipur (ANSAM) to oppose the

holding of the Autonomous District Council (ADC)elections in the State’s hill districts. It has been inforce since the midnight of April 11. ANSAM’s mainobjection to the holding of the polls is that the Mani-pur (Hill Areas) Autonomous District Council Act2008 (Third Amendment) has, in its present formand content, failed to protect the rights of the tribalpeople. Although it had called the blockade for sixdays initially, ANSAM extended it by a week on April17; this time it brought inter-State passenger busesalso under the purview of the blockade.

Appealing for cooperation from all sections ofpeople, ANSAM said: “It is not our intention to causeinconvenience to the public. However, in the event ofthe arbitrary imposition of the stated Act, our rightsare seriously threatened and therefore we expect alltribal people and those who believe in democracy toparticipate in the movement for justice.”

Meanwhile, Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibo-bi Singh urged the people to cooperate in the holdingof the elections. However, he maintained that sec-tions of the Act could be amended if need be. Ibobisaid the Centre was mounting pressure on his gov-ernment to hold the elections as the absence of elect-ed district councils amounted to denying the hill

The siegewithin

Coupled with this is the protesttriggered by the State government’srefusal to permit NSCN(I-M) leaderThuingaleng Muivah to visit hisbirthplace in Manipur.

An economic blockade called by a Naga

student body opposing ADC elections

has brought life to a standstill in the

landlocked State. B Y S U S H A N T A T A L U K D A R

The States/Manipur

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1 5

people their right to localself-governance. Besides, he said, de-velopment funds provided to ADCscould not be utilised if there were noelections.

On April 22, the State Cabinet de-cided to go ahead with the ADC polls,and on April 24 ANSAM declared anindefinite economic blockade of thetwo national highways.

ANSAM’s announcement was fol-lowed by a demand by the ManipurTribal Joint Action CommitteeAgainst Election Under UnwantedDistrict Council Act (MT-JAC-AEU-UDCA) asking all tribal legislators andMinisters to resign the day the StateElection Commission announced thepoll schedule.

As ANSAM intensified the block-ade, stocks of essential commoditiesbegan depleting rapidly. To top it,

fresh trouble came up when Thuinga-leng Muivah,the general secretary ofthe National Socialist Council of Naga-lim (Isak-Muivah), conveyed to theGovernment of India that he wanted tovisit his birthplace, Somdal in Ukhruldistrict of Manipur.

The Ministry of Home Affairs in-formed the Director General of Police,Manipur, Y. Joykumar, that Z-pluscategory security cover be arranged forMuivah during his visit to the Statefrom May 3 to 10. The Ministry in-formed him that Muivah would alsovisit the Naga-inhabited areas in Sen-apati, Tamenglong and Chandel dis-tricts of Manipur. A list of the publicfunctions Muivah would attend in Ma-nipur was also sent to him.

However, Ibobi refused to allowMuivah to enter Manipur. On April28, he was called to New Delhi whereFinance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily andHome Minister P. Chidambaram triedto prevail upon him. Ibobi succeededin impressing upon the Central leadersthat Muivah’s visit would create lawand order problems and trigger ethnictension in Manipur.

In protest against the Central gov-ernment’s request, the United Com-mittee Manipur (UCM) imposed acounter-blockade and banned themovement of all vehicles plying be-tween Imphal and other hill districts ofthe State indefinitely.

However, UCM leaders withdrewthe blockade after about a week whenthey realised that their blockade couldcreate tensions between the people ofthe valley and the hills. However,spontaneous counter-blockades con-tinued in different parts of the State;women’s groups in the valley enforcedone locally to prevent the transporta-tion of essential commodities to thehill districts.

N A G A R E A C T I O N Taking strong exception to the Stategovernment’s decision to prevent Mui-vah’s entry into Manipur, four Nagaorganisations – the Naga Hoho, theNaga Mothers’ Association, the NagaStudents’ Federation (NSF) and the

TRUCKS CARRYING ESSENTIAL commodities for Manipur waiting at MaoGate on the Nagaland-Manipur border on May 7.

RIT

U R

AJ K

ON

WAR

NSCN(I-M) GENERAL SCRETARYThuingaleng Muivah (left) withNagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rioin Viswema village, about 25 kmfrom the Nagaland capital ofKohima, on May 7.

RIT

U R

AJ K

ON

WAR

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 1 6 F R O N T L I N E

The States/Manipur

Naga People’s Move-ment for HumanRights – jointly servedan ultimatum to PrimeMinister ManmohanSingh on May 3 to pre-vail upon the State gov-ernment to lift the banwithin 24 hours. Theycategorically statedthat “we will have nooption but to take anyaction that we will con-sider appropriate andedifying in our quest forour rightful place”.They maintained that the proposedvisit of Muivah to his native village wasfor spreading the message of peace, notfor waging war against any communityor state.

Meanwhile, a delegation of theNSF of Nagaland, which wanted tovisit Manipur on May 3 on a stock-taking mission, was stopped by theState government at Mao Gate, theentry point to Manipur from Nagalandon NH 39. In protest, the NSF im-posed a blockade on NH 39 inNagaland.

M U I V A H ’ S T R I P Muivah turned down the Centre’s offerto facilitate his travel to his birthplaceby helicopter. His convoy rolled out ofthe NSCN(I-M) headquarters near Di-mapur in Nagaland, and he camped atViswema village near Mao Gate. TheManipur government rushed the Ma-nipur Rifles battalion and commandosto Mao Gate to prevent his entry intothe State.

Two Naga students died and sever-al others were hurt during a protestdemonstration on May 6 at Mao Gate.Many Naga people in Manipur fledtheir houses and took shelter in Naga-land. Muivah deferred his visit at therequest of the Prime Minister’s Office,while Union Home Secretary G.K. Pil-lai rushed to Manipur to prevail uponthe State government to withdraw itsforces from Mao Gate and institute aprobe into the May 6 incident. He thenwent to Viswema to request Muivah toput off his visit until the situation im-

proved. NagalandChief Minister Nei-phiu Rio, some of hisCabinet colleagues,representatives of var-ious civil society orga-nisations, and theCentre’s interlocutorfor the ongoing Nagapeace talks, R.S. Pan-dey, were present atthe meeting .

Two larger issuesthat have come to thefore amidst all this arethe “territorial integ-

rity of Manipur” and the “integrationof Naga-inhabited areas” into a “Naga-lim”. Seven Naga legislators in the Ma-nipur Assembly resigned in the wakeof the blockades and tensions.

The Manipur government’s banhas in a way helped the NSCN (I-M)push for the integration of Naga-in-habited areas in Manipur during itspeace talks with the Centre. However,this would mean compromising theterritorial integrity of Manipur.

The tough stand against a visit byMuivah has helped Ibobi’s Congress-led government to check the erosion ofmass support. This was evident whenFood and Civil Supplies MinisterYumkham Erabot was accorded a he-ro’s welcome by people in the Imphalvalley when he came with some 300trucks carrying supplies of essentialsfrom Jiribam point on the Assam-Ma-nipur border along the NH 53, whichhas 12 suspension bridges which makeit difficult for trucks carrying heavyloads to ply on it. The government alsoarranged the airlifting of rice and med-icines from Assam, though the quanti-ty was inadequate.

Muivah is still camping at Viswe-ma, waiting for a convenient time toenter Manipur. The Imphal valley iswitnessing strong protest demonstra-tions against him.

T H E 2 0 0 5 U P R I S I N GIn 2005, ANSAM called for a similareconomic blockade in protest againstthe Ibobi Singh government’s declara-tion of June 18 as “State Integrity Day”.

The “great June uprising” was a directfallout of the National Democratic Al-liance government’s declaration of theextension of the ceasefire with theNSCN (I-M) in 2001 without territo-rial limits and beyond Nagaland. Thiswas seen as a move by the Centre toconcede to the insurgent outfit’s de-mand for the integration of all Naga-inhabited areas of Assam, Manipurand Arunachal Pradesh, including thefour Naga-inhabited hill districts ofManipur, which account for two-thirds of the territory of the troubledState. Altogether 18 protesters losttheir lives in that uprising, most ofthem in firing by security forces. Sincethen, the territorial integrity of Mani-pur has been a rallying point for thepeople of Manipur.

On May 25, ANSAM rejected anappeal made by the Naga Leaders Fo-rum, Manipur, to call off the economicblockade.

A Congress delegation from Naga-land, led by its Pradesh Congress Com-mittee president Imkong Ao, metIbobi in Imphal on May 26 in a bid toresolve the impasse over the Muivahissue The Chief Minister is understoodto have told the delegation that hisgovernment had taken the decision af-ter taking all factors intoconsideration.

Blockades along NH-39 andNH-53, the lifelines of Manipur, havebecome a recurring feature. Oncetruckers went on strike for 52 days toprotest against such blockades and thepeople extended full support to them.The Manipur government moved theCentre for a highway protection force,but the latter asked it to mobilise Stateforces. The present economic blockadecannot be overcome merely by bring-ing in supplies by air or any other al-ternative route. The Centre will now beunder tremendous pressure to addressthe larger issues of “territorial integrityof Manipur” and “integration of Naga-inhabited areas” as neither the eco-nomic blockade nor Muivah’s pro-posed visit can be seen in isolationfrom them. �With inputs from IboyaimaLaithangbam in Manipur

OKRAM IBOBI SINGH,Chief Minister of Manipur.

R.V

.MO

OR

THY

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1 7

THE political topography of Sri Lanka haschanged beyond recognition since the military de-feat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)and the death of its leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, inMay last year. Contrary to the apprehensions inseveral quarters, there are no apparent signs of arevival of the LTTE within the geographical bounda-ries of Sri Lanka. It is significant that not a singleincident of violence, ethnic or otherwise, has oc-curred for a whole year. For Sinhalese Sri Lankans, it

is an ideal situation. But for the minorities, partic-ularly the Tamils, it is an uneasy peace.

Tamils are neither mourning the death of Pra-bakaran nor yearning for a return to the era of vio-lence. Their immediate worry is resettlement, andtheir medium-term and long-term worry is the pro-tection of their rights and a reconciliation with themajority community – a scenario in which they aretreated as equal citizens in the island-nation. Theextraordinary peace prevailing in the country has sofar not resulted in a commencement of the journeytowards reconciliation and a sense of security amongthe Tamils.

The ethnic war had displaced nearly 3,00,000Tamil civilians. Of them, nearly 2,00,000 have beenresettled in their original places of habitation. But itwould take a while before they can resume theirnormal lives as the de-mining process is still goingon. The reconstruction of the war-ravaged conflictzone in the north and in parts of the east is turningout to be a time-consuming and costly affair.

The war has orphaned and disabled a substantialnumber of people. Rehabilitating them is a gigantictask, and no government can make meaningful pro-gress on these fronts without the help and cooper-ation of every conceivable source inside and outsidethe country.

Besides, there is the issue of rehabilitation of thenearly 12,000 LTTE combatants taken into custodyby the military. Of them 2,500 have been trained andare being rehabilitated. The military intends to reha-bilitate the remaining cadre in the next few months.

R A J A P A K S A ’ S P O W E RUnfortunately, the euphoria over the war victoryamong the majority community has led to the emer-gence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa as one of themost powerful political leaders Sri Lanka has everseen in its post-independent history. Ideally, astrong government is good for political stability andeconomic development, but in a polarised societylike Sri Lanka it is not a healthy proposition.

The fallout of the war has hurt not only the LTTE,but also the opposition. The extent to which theopposition has been weakened was evident in the

A year after

With U.N. Secretary-General BanKi-moon planning to appoint apanel to advise him on mattersrelating to human rights violationsand NGOs seeking an inquiry intothe last phase of the war, thegovernment is under pressure.

The Rajapaksa government’s belated institution of a commission to review the

civil war years seems politically motivated. B Y B . M U R A L I D H A R R E D D Y IN COLOMBO

Sri Lanka

PRESIDENT MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA during a May Day rally inColombo this year.

REU

TER

S

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 1 8 F R O N T L I N E

January presidential election when itchose to back former Army chief Sa-rath Fonseka as the common consen-sus candidate. The hapless oppositionparties thought Fonseka was the bestbet to take on Rajapaksa since he hadled the war against the LTTE. The as-sumption proved wrong, and Rajapak-sa scored a resounding victory with amajority of over 18 per cent of the votespolled.

The general elections which fol-lowed in April saw a repeat perform-ance by the combine led by Rajapaksa.For the first time since the adoption ofthe new Constitution in 1978, the rul-ing combine managed to come close toa two-thirds majority in Parliament.

These developments have not onlywidened the gulf between the rulingcombine and the opposition but alsoleft the Tamils in a state of confusion.The dilemma faced by the Tamils wasevident at the time of the presidentialas well as the parliamentary elections.In contrast to the rest of the island, thetwo provinces dominated by Tamilsvoted for parties pitted against the rul-ing combine.

C O M M I S S I O N F O R M E DThe half-hearted initiatives taken bythe Rajapaksa regime in the name ofredressing the real and perceivedgrievances of the Tamils have nothelped in providing the much-neededhealing touch. The eight-member,multi-ethnic ‘Lessons Learnt and Rec-onciliation’ Commission appointed bythe President on the eve of the firstanniversary of the military victory overthe LTTE best illustrates the point.

The commission, announced onMay 15, has been mandated to reportwithin six months the lessons learntfrom the events between February2002 and May 2009, and their attend-ant concerns and to recommend mea-sures to ensure that there will be norecurrence of such a situation. Besides,it has been charged with reportingwhether any person, group or institu-tion directly or indirectly bears re-sponsibility for the situation thatprevailed during the period. It also hasto recommend measures that can be

taken to prevent the recurrence of suchconcerns in future, and promote fur-ther national unity and reconciliationamong all communities.

While appointing the commission,the government acknowledged: “[I]thas been apparent for quite some timeto the government that the conflict sit-uation, due to the very brutality andlong duration of the violence perpe-trated against Sri Lanka, would havecaused great hurt and anguish in theminds of the people that requires en-deavours for rehabilitation and therestoration of democratic governance,complimented by measures forreconciliation.”

The constitution of the commis-sion has raised several questions. Thetime frame for the probe is obviouslypolitically motivated. It was in Febru-ary 2002 that the then government ledby Prime Minister Ranil Wickremes-inghe signed the Cease Fire Agree-ment (CFA) with the LTTE underNorway’s mediation. Rajapaksa washighly critical of the CFA and had infact fought the 2005 presidential elec-tion on the plank of abrogation of theCFA and replacement of Norway asthe official mediator for talks betweenthe Sri Lankan government and theTigers.

There had been a great deal of de-bate in the past few years within andoutside Sri Lanka on the merits of the

CFA, but now the subject is consideredas closed. The question is what pur-pose is going to be served by raking upthe past. Since the military defeat ofthe LTTE, Rajapaksa had on severaloccasions talked about the need tomove forward in a constructive man-ner to find a political solution accept-able to all stakeholders in the ethnicconflict. Setting February 2002 as thestarting point for an investigation bythe commission is contrary to thepromise made by the Presidenthimself.

Even assuming that the govern-ment is earnest in its effort to find apolitical solution to the conflict, ques-tions have been raised as to why it hadto wait one full year to appoint a com-mission. While approving the settingup of the commission, the Cabinetnoted that the President had allowedSri Lanka’s Permanent Representativein the United Nations to mention inhis remarks at the U.N. Security Coun-cil Interactive Briefing on June 5 thatthe government was in the process ofinitiating a domestic mechanism forfact-finding and reconciliation.

“This statement stemmed from thegovernment’s commitment to the pro-motion and protection of humanrights, as consistently articulated andaffirmed by Sri Lanka at sessions of theHuman Rights Council. The Presidentinformed the Cabinet that in order toaccomplish this task it has becomenecessary to set in motion a mecha-nism which will provide a historicbridge between the past of a societycharacterised by inflicted strife and afuture society founded on the contin-ued recognition of democracy andpeaceful co-existence and the afford-ing of equal opportunities for all SriLankans as guaranteed by the Consti-tution,” a press statement issued on theoccasion said.

W A R C R I M E S Obviously, though the governmenthad committed itself to such an initia-tive nearly a year ago, it was in nohurry. It is against this backdrop thatthe timing of the announcement of thecommission has raised doubts. Since

MAY 19, 2009: Sri Lankan soldierswith the body of LTTE leaderVelupillai Prabakaran in Mullaittivu.

AFP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 1 9

the end of the war, the government hasbeen under pressure from variousquarters within and outside the coun-try to initiate an inquiry into the charg-es of human rights violations,particularly in the last phase of thewar.

For several weeks now, the Raja-paksa government has been at logger-heads with U.N. Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon over the latter’s proposalto appoint a panel of experts to advisehim on the subject of human rightsviolations in Sri Lanka. Similarly, Col-ombo is engaged in a war of words withthe European Union (E.U.) over theformer’s alleged failure to conform tosome of the international conventionson human rights.

The E.U. has decided to withdrawtariff concessions to the Sri Lankanapparel industry from August on-wards, and currently negotiations arein progress between the two sides forthe restoration of the facility.

Some international non-govern-mental organisations (NGOs) are alsoseeking an inquiry, particularly intothe last phase of the war. Two daysafter the appointment of the commis-sion by the government, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group(ICG) said in a report titled “WarCrimes in Sri Lanka” that there wasenough evidence to show that repeatedviolations of international law were

made by both the Sri Lankan securityforces and the LTTE during the lastfive months of Eelam War IV (whichwas fought from August 2006 to May2009).

Seeking an international inquiryinto the alleged war crimes, the ICGsaid that the Sri Lankan governmenthad conclusively demonstrated its un-willingness to undertake genuine in-vestigations into abuses by the securityforces and continued to deny any re-sponsibility for civilian casualties. Itsaid a true accounting was needed toaddress the grievances and hence theinternational community had to takethe lead.

“The scale of civilian deaths andsuffering demands a response,” saysICG president Louise Arbour. “Futuregenerations will demand to know whathappened, and future peace in Sri Lan-ka requires some measure of justice.”

Maintaining that the internationalcommunity has a responsibility to up-hold the rule of law, the reputation ofinternational agencies and respect forinternational humanitarian law and,more importantly, to protect civilianlives, the ICG warned:

“Today, a number of other coun-tries are considering ‘the Sri Lankanoption’ – unrestrained military action,refusal to negotiate, disregard for hu-manitarian issues, restrictions on in-ternational observers including

mediapersons and humanitarianworkers – as a way to deal with in-surgents and other violent groups.

“An international inquiry is neces-sary not only for justice and long-termpeace in Sri Lanka but also to helpprevent a repeat elsewhere,” RobertTempler, ICG’s Asia Program director,said. “It would serve as a warning toother governments that may be con-sidering ‘the Sri Lankan model’ to ad-dress their own internal conflicts.”

It is certainly not a coincidencethat the newly appointed External Af-fairs Minister of Sri Lanka, during hisfirst visit to New York, in May, maderepeated references to the “Reconcil-iation” Commission. The Ministermade it a point to tell the U.N. Secre-tary-General that the commission ap-pointed by the Rajapaksa governmentwould look into all aspects of the con-flict, including ‘accountability’. He alsoquestioned the U.N. chief’s move toappoint a group of experts to advisehim on matters relating to Sri Lanka.

E M E R G E N C Y L A W S S T I L L I NP L A C EThe scepticism that critics of the gov-ernment harbour about the commis-sion is not difficult to understand.Afew days earlier there was an an-nouncement regarding the scalingdown of emergency regulations. Sincethe end of the war, questions have beenraised by the opposition as well asNGOs about the need for continuingwith the emergency laws. However,the government overruled the objec-tions on the ground that the laws werenecessary to enable the armed forces tohunt down the remaining Tiger cadre.

Emergency regulations have beenin vogue in Sri Lanka since the assassi-nation of Foreign Minister LakshmanKadirgamar in August 2005 by theLTTE. Under the Sri Lanka Constitu-tion, emergency laws could be enactedonly by Parliament and they are validfor a period of one month only. SinceAugust 2005, the emergency laws arebeing extended on a monthly basis. Infact, in March and April, the dissolvedParliament was summoned to extendthe life of the laws. �

TAMIL REFUGEES RETURN home from the camps on a tractor, atKathankulam village in Mannar, in October 2009. Nearly 2,00,000 Tamilshave been resettled in their original places of habitation.

ERAN

GA

JAYA

WAR

DEN

A/P

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 2 0 F R O N T L I N E

MYSORE, the city of palaces, is popularly ac-knowledged as the cultural capital of Karnataka anda favourite tourist destination. The city, which wasthe capital of the erstwhile princely state of Mysore,

keeps a slow pace in marked contrast to the freneticpace of Bangalore, the State capital, around 150kilometres away. The palaces that dot the city give ita distinct identity, while the trees along broad ave-nues add to the city’s charm. In the past, Mysorenurtured great traditions in the fields of art, architec-ture, education, literature and progressive adminis-tration. Today, it has established itself as a leadingcentre of higher education in the country.

Before Independence, enlightened kings andtheir far-sighted diwans – Sir K. Seshadri Rao, Sir M.Visvesvaraya and Sir Mirza Ismail among them –made Mysore one of the most progressive states inthe country. A modern system of education was es-tablished in Mysore as early as 1833. Maharaja’sCollege, now affiliated to the University of Mysore,was founded in 1864 and became a first-grade col-lege in 1894. Major Central government research

Centre of learningThe University of Mysore was the first university in the region. Today, Mysore city

boasts several world-class institutions. B Y A S P E C I A L C O R R E S P O N D E N T

A modern system of education wasestablished in Mysore as early as1833. Maharaja’s College wasfounded in 1864 and the Universityof Mysore in 1916. There are alsomany Central government researchinstitutes and private colleges.

FOCUS EDUCATION IN MYSORE

CRAWFORD HALL OF the University of Mysore. Planned originally to house the Representative Assembly of Mysore,it now hosts convocations and other important functions.

M.A

. SR

IRAM

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 2 2 F R O N T L I N E

institutes and private colleges flourishin the city, which has a population ofabout 10 lakh.

The University of Mysore, estab-lished in 1916 in Mysore city, was thefirst university in the region and thesixth in the country and has a richtradition of scholarship. The Karnata-ka State Open University (KSOU) wasset up in 1996 to take over the distanceeducation programmes of the Univer-sity of Mysore, which had been con-ducting them since 1969.

The city also has several qualityinstitutions run by theJagadguru Sri Shivarath-reeshwara (JSS) Mahavi-dyapeetha, such as theJSS Law College (JSSLC)and the JSS Polytechnicfor the Differently Abled(JSSPDA). Internationalresidential schools, suchas the Jnanasarovara In-ternational ResidentialSchool (JIRS), have alsocome up recently, mak-ing Mysore a completeeducational destination.

The University of

Mysore was founded by the Maharajaof Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, in1916 to promote higher learning. It issituated on a beautiful campus calledManasagangotri, which is close to theheart of the city and offers a panoramicview of the nearby Chamundi hills.The administrative offices of the uni-versity are located in the majesticCrawford Hall, built in 1947. Plannedoriginally to house the RepresentativeAssembly of Mysore, it now hosts uni-versity convocations and other impor-tant functions. The university has

inherited a vision andtradition of promotingsocially relevant educa-tion that has the scope tonurture individual excel-lence, socially consciouscitizenship and inclusivedevelopment. It has un-der its jurisdiction 183 af-filiated colleges in fourdistricts – Mysore, Man-dya, Hassan and Cham-arajanagar – 49recognised research cen-tres and 26 outreach cen-tres spread throughout

the country. The university caters tomore than 70,000 students, including5,526 in postgraduate courses. Around1,500 foreign students from 51 coun-tries pursue higher studies at theuniversity.

Its motto, Na Hi Jnanena Sa-drusham – meaning “nothing is equalto knowledge”– rightly reflects its atti-tude. By 2025, the university hopes tobe one among the top 150 universitiesin the world and one among the top 10in the country.

K S O UThe KSOU was established on June 1,1996, under a Special Act of the Statelegislature entitled the KSOU Act,1992. It was established to provide op-portunities in higher education to peo-ple living in remote areas in the Stateand outside. with particular emphasison disadvantaged groups, matureadults (over 15 per cent of students),housewives and working professionals(close to 50 per cent of students).

The KSOU was carved out of theInstitute for Correspondence Coursesand Continuing Education (ICC&CE),which was established by the Universi-ty of Mysore in 1969. It follows thecredit system and uses the self-learn-ing material prescribed by the Dis-tance Education Council (DEC), NewDelhi. The DEC has approved all theprogrammes of the KSOU up to 2013.

The academic programmes offeredby the university are regularly updatedon the basis of periodic market sur-veys. The content of the updated pro-grammes is routed through an expertscommittee for checks on quality andstandards. The syllabi of the pro-grammes are revised periodically. Awide variety of programmes, both con-ventional and professional, are on of-fer. The latter are to help workingprofessionals to update their knowl-edge and skills so as to enable them tocope with the challenges ofglobalisation.

The KSOU has partnered with pri-vate institutions to offer professionalprogrammes such as Master of Science(Information Technology), Bachelorof Science (Information Technology),

V.G. TALAWAR,Vice-Chancellor of theUniversity of Mysore.


M.A

. SR

IRAM

VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS in the medical transcription laboratory atthe JSS Polytechnic for the Differently Abled.

BY

SPEC

IAL

ARR

ANG

EMEN

T

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 2 4 F R O N T L I N E

Master of Business Administration inAviation. These tie-ups offer the sup-port of physical infrastructure such aslaboratories and the necessary humanresource. According to Professor K.S.Rangappa, Vice-Chancellor of theKSOU, the university’s plans includethe starting of online courses.

“We are also planning to introducescience courses from this year, includ-ing courses in environmental science,computer science, statistics and math-ematics, and are planning to shift to anew campus very soon,” said Rang-appa. The KSOU is forging ahead andmarking out a strong identity for itselfeven internationally.

J S S L CThe JSSLC was started in 1982 and isthe first law college in the country toachieve autonomous status, whichgives it complete freedom with regardto admissions and curriculum. Thecollege has been given a B+ by theNational Assessment and Accredita-tion Council (NAAC) and is also recog-nised as an institution of excellence by

the Bar Council of India. The faculty,which have been drawn from diversebackgrounds and include several toppractising lawyers, are well qualified,have practical knowledge and experi-ence, and use evaluative, analyticaland problem-solving teaching meth-ods. For the past 15 years, the uni-versity toppers in law have beenstudents of the JSSLC, the college says.The diversity of studentsis hard to miss on thecampus. “The JSSLC hasmade it a point to have alot of diversity in its stu-dent body as the variedexperiences enrich theeducational quality. Wehave students from 12countries, including Af-ghanistan and the Afri-can continent, as well asstudents from across In-dia,” said Prof. K.S. Sure-sh, principal of theJSSLC.

The college also un-derstands the impor-

tance of continuous innovation andthat law students need to have knowl-edge in many different areas. In thisregard, the college is introducing a va-riety of courses to allow students to optfor courses outside their stream. Theywill be given additional credits forthese courses. “All students will havean opportunity to add 25 credits to hiscourse, which will be made a part of the

marks card,” said Suresh.From the forthcom-

ing academic year, thecollege has introduced apractical/skill compo-nent that will be separatefrom the theory compo-nent so that students canlearn through practice.“The student’s practicalknowledge of law will becomplete once she goesthrough a course at theJSSLC,” emphasisedSuresh. The students ofthe JSSLC have done thecollege proud by winningat leading moot court

M.A

. SR

IRAM

STARTED IN 1982, the JSS Law College was the first law college in the country to achieve autonomous status.


K.S. RANGAPPA,Vice-Chancellor,Karnataka State OpenUniversity.

BY

SPEC

IAL

ARR

ANG

EMEN

T

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 2 6 F R O N T L I N E

competitions across the country. ManyHigh Court judges recruit studentsfrom the JSSLC to assist them. Courtvisits and participation in legal aid andliteracy programmes are added advan-tages that the students get at this in-stitution. The college has campusplacement, and reputed multinationalcompanies and legal firms regularlyhire its students.

J S S P D AIn 1991, for the first time in India, apolytechnic for the physically hand-icapped was established in Mysore.Called the JSS Polytechnic for the Dif-ferently Abled, the institute providesprofessional training at the diplomalevel to those who are hearing im-paired or visually impaired or orthope-dically challenged. It was startedunder a World Bank assistancescheme of the Government of Karna-taka at a cost of Rs.12 crore and islocated on four hectares on the campusof the JSS Technical Institutions inMysore. The entire polytechnic is sin-gle-storied and has been constructedso that students can go about theirdaily activities without assistance.

According to Nanjundaswamy, theprincipal of the polytechnic, it tookmore than two years to design thecompletely barrier-free building. Thearchitecture of the building even ex-ceeds the norms of the World HealthOrganisation (WHO) for differentlyabled friendly architecture. The insti-tute offers six diploma courses of threeyears’ (six semesters) duration each.Courses are offered in architecture,commercial practice, computer sci-ence and engineering, jewellery designand technology, electronics and com-munication engineering, and comput-er applications. The JSSPDA also hasplacement facilities.

One of the institute’s most success-ful courses is the medical transcriptioncourse offered as part of the three-yearDiploma in Computer Applications forthe visually impaired (totally or par-tially blind). The course, which isbased on the guidelines provided bythe American Association for MedicalTranscription (AAMT), is highly com-

mended, and 12 students who took itare now working as medical transcrip-tionists for American medical tran-scription companies in India. Visuallyimpaired candidates who completethis course have good job prospectsand can lead independent lives.

The JSSPDA has students fromacross the southern States, with manyof them, including local residents, pre-ferring to live on campus as they formfriendships and socialcommunities amongpeople who have similarimpairments. A hydroth-erapy pool for orthopedi-cally challenged studentsis a part of the facilities atthe polytechnic. Many ofthe faculty membershave been associatedwith the institute forclose to two decades andhave developed teachingmethods to suit the needsof their students. Twomore institutes of thisnature have come up, inKanpur and Tirupati, following the ex-ample set by the JSSPDA, but it re-mains the pioneer, in its methods aswell as in its service motive. The cours-es are subsidised, and there are severalscholarships for deserving students.

J I R SThe Jnanasarovara International Res-idential School was established on theoutskirts of Mysore in 2004. Theschool attracts an increasing numberof students from India and abroad andthis is testimony to the benchmark ithas set for quality education. The En-glish medium, coeducational schoolhas students from 12 countries and 10States across India and offers educa-tion from Montessori/LKG to the 12thStandard. It is affiliated to the CISCE(Council for the Indian School Certif-icate Examinations) in New Delhi andprepares students for the ICSE (IndianCertificate of Secondary Education ex-amination) in the 10th Standard andthe ISC (Indian School Certificate Ex-amination) in the 12th Standard. It isalso recognised as a University of Cam-

bridge International ExaminationCentre and offers the IGCSE (Interna-tional General Certificate of SecondaryEducation) course.

According to Sudhakar S. Shetty,chairman of the JIRS, the school pro-vides its students with “motherly care”along with a consistent emphasis onsystematic monitoring through theholding of weekly tests so that the stu-dents are ready for board exams. The

school is the dream ofSudhakar Shetty, whohas a long history ma-naging educationalinstitutions. Theschool also offers aneducation based onIndian values, whichdoes not mean that itis religious. Askedwhy he chose the resi-dential model ofschooling, SudhakarShetty said: “Dayschools can perhapscomplete the pre-scribed lessons but the

learning process remains incomplete.This can only be done in a residentialschool where there is a systematic anddisciplined method in place so thatthere is all-round development of thechild.” The demanding schedule atJRIS is a mix of academics, sports andco-curricular activities. Several clubsoffer creative challenges so that thechild can learn practically.

The faculty of the JRIS consistsentirely of postgraduate teachers,most of whom mentor students intheir roles as “dorm parents”. For thispurpose almost all the faculty reside oncampus. The teacher-to-student ratiois also one of the most favourableamong residential schools, with onlyeight students for each teacher. “Wealso have exchange programmes withschools in foreign countries, and lastyear a batch of our students visitedKuala Lumpur,” said Sudhakar Shetty.Having established a name for itself insuch a short time, the JRIS seems to bewell on its way to becoming one of thetop international residential schools inIndia. �

SUDHAKAR S. SHETTY,chairman of the JIRS.


BY

SPEC

IAL

ARR

ANG

EMEN

T

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 2 8 F R O N T L I N E

lettersIndia & PakistanTHE Cover Story (June 4)presented a fine picture ofthe differences between In-dia and Pakistan. In resum-ing talks, the basic thing isto build trust. The PakistanPrime Minister and the Ar-my chief coming togethercould make the talks fruit-ful. Though one should notexpect miracles, there is achance for better under-standing in the future.

A. JACOB SAHAYAM

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

THE Cover Story article“Bridging the gap”, thoughinformative and interesting,ignored the fact that thetalks that India has had withPakistan several times in thepast all failed miserably.Whenever the Indian PrimeMinister meets the PakistanPrime Minister, Indians areunnecessarily optimisticthat the outcome will begood.

First of all, the demo-cratic governments of Pa-kistan are always in aprecarious situation. Nonehas been able to complete afull term. They have alwaysbeen at the mercy of the Ar-my. Past experience indi-cates that generally afterpeace talks with India, thegovernment is toppled andthe Army takes over.

Whenever there is talkabout peace with a demo-cratically elected govern-ment of Pakistan, Indiansshould understand that itdoes not have full power, au-thority or control. So, it isnecessary for the PakistanArmy and/or the ISI chief to

also take part in peace talks,otherwise they will lead no-where.

S.P. SHARMA

MUMBAI

THE talks between PrimeMinisters ManmohanSingh and Yusouf Raza Gi-lani are a waste of time. Thegovernment need not havegone back on its word that itwould not hold talks withPakistan unless those re-sponsible for the Mumbaiattacks were punished. Thisdialogue is to please the U.S.Like Israel, India has to rec-oncile itself to living with aperpetual enemy as itsneighbour. India need notbe friends with Pakistan; itjust has to be prepared todefend itself at all timesagainst unprovoked attacksfrom this irrational country.If India remains preparedfor war, Pakistan will not bea problem for it.

S. RAGHUNATHA PRABHU

ALAPPUZHA, KERALA

TerrorismWHENEVER a terror at-tack occurs in India, fingersare pointed at Muslims(“Hindutva hand”, June 4).Many people would berounded up, and a numberof Muslim youth arrestedand interrogated. A recentlypublished book, Evidence ofSuspicion by Amitava Ku-mar, notes how innocentMuslims are made scape-goats and spend their livesin prisons without being in-volved in any attacks.

A shameful example ofthis was the arrest, tortureand incarceration of 75

young Muslims in Hydera-bad in 2007 and 2008. Therecent report that links Hin-dutva groups with the Ajm-er Sharif blasts is welcome.Hopefully, there will bemore such reports.

This is a lesson to inves-tigators and the police de-partment that honestinvestigations should becarried out before anyone isaccused.

S. AJISH KHAN

POLLACHI, TAMIL NADU

SasthamkottaIT was shocking to readabout the receding of theSasthamkotta lake (“A lake’slast sigh?”, June 4). It is notenough to create awarenessprogrammes on the issue forWorld Water Day andWorld Environment Day.

The government shouldimmediately take steps toban the mining of clay andsand in the area to protectthis natural water resource.

JAYALEKSHMI

RAJASEKARAN

TIRUNELVELI, T. N.

NarcoanalysisTHE Supreme Court’s land-mark judgment againstforced narcoanalysis, ortruth serum tests, is com-mendable (“Moment oftruth”, June 4).

Physicians argue thatthe intravenous administra-tion of the sedative sodiumpentothal could lead to side-effects such as headaches,chronic respiratory prob-lems, amnesia and even co-ma. Despite knowing this,

Indian investigative author-ities continued to practisethis barbaric mode of inves-tigation. Perhaps, this is theonly country that dependedon this unconstitutionalmode of investigation.

IPPILI SANTHOSH KUMAR

SRIKAKULAM, A.P.

THE Supreme Court’s rul-ing limiting the use of brainmapping and polygraphtests is welcome although ithas come late in the day andhas loopholes.

S. VANTHONDAN

TIRUCHIRAPPALLI, T.N.

THE article on narcoanaly-sis, polygraph examinationsand brainmapping tests wasinformative. These much-abused tests elicit informa-tion that may not necessar-ily be true, and the SupremeCourt’s judgment is apt.

K.R. SRINIVASAN

SECUNDERABAD

Khap ruleRAJASTHAN appears to besliding into the medieval ag-es, with its khap panchayatsjustifying honour killingsand demanding an amend-ment to the Hindu MarriageAct (“Outside the law”, June4).

Khaps are neofeudalis-tic organisations that ques-tion the rule of law and defythe constitutionally guaran-teed equality of citizens.During elections, they de-cide the fate of candidateson the basis of the candi-dates’ caste.

Rajasthan, where evennow the pernicious practiceof sati has supporters, needsgreat social reformers like

ANNOUNCEMENTLetters, whether by surface mail ore-mail, must carry the full postaladdress and the full name, or thename with initials.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 2 9

Raja Ram Mohun Roy tocleanse its social system.

S.M. KOMPELLA

KAKINADA, A.P.

IPLMAKING money by anymeans goes against the spir-it of cricket (“League ofscandals”, May 21). Thefunctioning of the IPL com-mittee is not transparent.The organisations and peo-ple involved in the IPL arenot interested in locatingtalent or promoting sportsin India.

T20 is the market ver-sion of cricket. The mostdisappointing and frustrat-ing aspect is that while thereis a shortage of electricity inIndia for irrigation and in-dustry, enormous quantitiesof power are used to orga-nise floodlit matches.

SURENDRA KUMAR YADAV

GORAKHPUR, U.P.

LALIT MODI has changedcricket into an Instant ProfitLaboratory. Like a Hindimasala film, the T20 formatentertains its viewers forthree or four hours, with theadded spice of cheerleaders.The format also creates avirtual ground for moneylaundering, frauds andmany other profit-makingillegal activities.

ALOK BHARADWAJ

LUCKNOW

PEOPLE, including media-persons, need to be remind-ed that the franchises wereauctioned. In an auction, itis the auctioneer’s job to getthe best bid price and collectthe money, and Lalit Modihas done a great job.

Ratification by a boarddoes not make sense be-cause the success of the auc-tion depends on the level ofbidding, and the auctio-

neer’s hammer is the finalauthority. Nor is it the auc-tioneer’s responsibility toprobe the financial, legal ormoral probity of the bid-ders. The cricket boardcould have asked for pre-qualification/scrutiny of in-tending bidders beforeadmitting them to the auc-tion, but apparently it didnot do so.

G. RAMAKRISHNA

MUMBAI

IT looks like the IPL tourna-ments that were beingplayed across India on fast-track pitches for the lastthree years were organisedby a man who never consid-ered how today would im-pact tomorrow. Everyonewho had something to dowith the IPL was in it tomake money, and as quicklyas possible.

K.P. RAJAN

MUMBAI

THE title “Fly in the soup”was an apt one. It is onlybecause of Shashi Tharoorand the Kochi team that theIPL fiasco got exposed. Hadthe team succumbed to LalitModi’s pressure, nobodywould have known about it.

K. SRIKUMAR

MUSCAT

ClarificationIN the article “Corruption &state” (May 21), a referencewas made to Rajat Gupta’salleged involvement in theGalleon matter. Contrary tothe article, I would like toclarify that Gupta has notbeen charged in this matterand has not done anythingwrong. His record of ethicalconduct and his integrity inhis professional and person-al life is beyond reproach.He has made significantphilanthropic and civic con-

tributions in India, the U.S.and elsewhere.

SUNALI ROHRA

SPOKESPERSON FOR

RAJAT GUPTA

MUMBAI

Benazir’s killingTHE author of the article“Palpable fraud” (May 21)calls the U.N. report on Be-nazir Bhutto’s assassinationa fraud because it is criticalof Pakistan, its Army andthe ISI. The report is fairand seminal, but the U.N.will not indict Pakistan as aterrorist state, thanks toAmerica.

NIRODE MOHANTY

CALIFORNIA, U.S.

MaoistsTHOUGH development isthe best strategy to deal withthe Maoist insurgency, itwill prove fatal if the gov-ernment hesitates to take uparms against the extremists(“Chinks in the armour”,May 7).

The recent killing of 82CRPF jawans proves thatthe paramilitary forces areinefficient. Though the Ar-my has the experience, de-ploying it to counterinternal threats would beharmful to the spirit of de-mocracy.

The best strategy wouldbe to adopt a joint manpow-er initiative for the Armyand paramilitary forces.Well-trained Army person-nel could be transferred tothe paramilitary forces oncethey have completed theirservice in the Army. Thiswill help create paramilitaryforces that are well-ac-quainted with leadershipqualities and are betteraware of the tactics to be fol-

lowed while dealing withMaoists.

E.A. IBRAHIM

VYTTILA, KERALA

MalnutritionTHE Cover Story on malnu-trition among children(“Stunted India”, April 23)had a good collection of arti-cles that reflected the realIndia. Despite decades ofstate intervention, childmalnutrition remains, im-plying that the country’s ec-onomic growth has notbenefited the most vulner-able sections. If the statecontinues with its presentpro-market policies, whatwill be the future conditionof India’s poor? The CoverStory is a wake-up call.

SARBESWAR PADHAN

BURLA, ORISSA

MORE shocking in a waythan the Cover Story on“Stunted India” was the factthat many readers (Indians)learned about the country’smalnourished children onlyafter going through the arti-cles in Frontline.

It is not surprising thatour political leaders are notinterested in dealing withsuch issues because chil-dren do not form part of anyvote bank. There is also themisconception that chil-dren are the responsibilitynot of the state but of theirfamilies. The governmenthas made its priorities clearby allocating less than 1 percent of the GDP for schemessuch as the Integrated ChildDevelopment Services.

SILPA SATHEESH

KOTTAYAM, KERALA

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 3 0 F R O N T L I N E

A MILESTONE in biology was reached on May20 when Craig Venter of human genome fame andassociates from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI)reported in the online journal Science Express thatthey had for the first time created a self-replicatingcell with a chemically synthesised genome. The ac-tual breakthrough of achieving a blue self-replicat-ing colony of these “synthetic cells” came in the earlymorning of March 29 and the paper was submittedfor publication on April 9.

Compared with all the unwarranted and, in fact,wrong media hype calling it a creation of ‘syntheticlife’, the abstract of the paper is matter-of-fact andunderstated. What Venter’s team had done does notamount to creating new life from scratch. It is noteven clear if one can call the creation “synthetic cells”as Venter prefers to call it. But the advancementcertainly marks a technical feat that could have ma-jor implications for biotechnology in the years tocome.

As Venter described it during the press confer-ence at the American Association for the Advance-ment of Science (AAAS) on May 20, it is a cell madeby starting with the digitised information of a nat-urally occurring bacterial genome; building thechromosome from four bottles of chemicals corre-sponding to the four basic chemical units of DNA(deoxyribonucleic acid); assembling the chromo-some in yeast, transplanting it into a recipient cell ofa slightly different bacterium whose replication isnow entirely controlled by the new synthetic chro-mosome; and thus transforming that cell into a newsynthetic bacterial species. “This is the first self-

replicating species that we have on the planet whoseparent is a computer,” Venter remarked.

Venter’s team synthesised the 1.08 million basepair (bp) chromosome of a modified Mycoplasmamycoides genome with 14 of its genes deleted and a‘watermark’ written in another 5,000-odd bp to dis-tinguish it from natural chromosome. The syntheticgenome, which is almost identical to that of thenatural bacterium, was transplanted into recipientcells of a close microbial relative M. capricolum toproduce a new self-replicating cell, but with thecharacteristics of M. mycoides.

N E W C O D EThe team has called the new species M. mycoidesJCVI-syn 1.0 (or Synthia). The watermark is a “newcode within the code within the code… which allowsuse of entire English alphabet with punctuations andnumbers,” according to Venter. It is a code developedby the team for writing and interpreting messages inDNA compared to the ones that have been used forwriting messages in genetic code.

The synthetic genome carries in the genetic codelanguage the names of the 47 authors and key con-tributors to the project and three website addresses.There are also three quotations that have been codedinto the genome to give, in Venter’s words, a philo-sophical perspective to this technical advance. Thefirst is from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, and torecreate life out of life.” The second is a quote fromAmerican Prometheus, the book on J. Robert Oppen-heimer: “See things not as they are, but as they mightbe.” And the third is the famous Richard Feynman’s“What I cannot build, I cannot understand.”

In December 1967, Arthur Kornberg and col-leagues at Stanford University showed that theycould copy the DNA of the phage Phi X 174 (a virusthat attacks the microbe E. coli) producing an entitywith the same infectivity as the wild virus. Thoughthe phage’s genome sequence was not known (it wasdetermined 10 years later by Fred Sanger and col-leagues), Kornberg had hoped that the technique,besides aiding the study of genetics and the searchfor the cure of diseases, would reveal the basic proc-

Now, synthetic cell

It takes them closer to their ultimategoal: synthesising a minimal cellcontaining only the genes necessaryto sustain life in its simplest form,which will help them understandbetter how cells work.

A milestone in biology is reached as a team of scientists led by Craig Venter

recreates an existing form of bacterial life. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

Science & Technology

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 3 1

esses of life itself. The achievement washailed as a spectacular breakthrough,which had come “the closest yet” tocreating life.

M O D I F I E D L I F EAs techniques in biology evolved overthe years, we have known that stretch-es of DNA can be synthesised, and wehave also known that these stretchescan be introduced into cells of orga-nisms and be expressed. Digitisationof genomic information has increasedby more than eight orders of magni-tude over the past 25 years.

But what we have here is not just avery long stretch of DNA but the entiregenome of a naturally occurring orga-nism synthesised and, more signifi-cantly, the synthetic or prosthetic

genome transplanted into the cyto-plasm of a another organism fromwhich cells are isolated and where thereplication is now controlled not by itsoriginal chromosome but only by thenew synthetic chromosome. That is,cells have now been endowed with anew modified life.

This might seem stunningly closeto creating ‘new life’ but is still a far cryfrom it. What has been achieved here isessentially recreation of an existingbacterial form of life. Even if the syn-thesised genome was substantially dif-ferent from that of any existing form oflife, a conceivable possibility, one canstill not call this creation of new life.One can call it that only if the wholecell is synthesised from scratch.

Only a small part of the cell is syn-

thetic as the genome accounts for only1 per cent of the dry weight of a cell.But, of course, the genome is key to life,without which the cell is dead. Theresearch groups are trying to createfully synthetic cells (also called proto-cells), but they have met with limitedsuccess so far, using chemicals alone.

It took 15 years for Venter’s team toarrive at this proof-of-concept experi-ment. Back in 1995, Hamilton Smithand Clyde Hutchison of his team hadsequenced the first two genomes ofself-replicating genomes in history –Haemophilus influenzae and M. gen-italium. The latter, in fact, was a600,000 bp chromosome, the smallestknown genome of a self-replicating or-ganism. However, more than 100 ofthe 485 protein-coding genes of M.genitalium were apparently found tobe dispensable, according to the Sci-ence paper.

So the question that Venter andcolleagues asked was: If this is sup-posed to be the smallest genome, couldthere be even a smaller genome? Couldthe basis of cellular life be understoodat the genetic level? For that two basicsteps were required: synthesising a fullbacterial genome and getting it towork in a recipient cell.

“It’s been a 15-year quest just to getto the starting point now to be able toanswer those questions,” Venter saidat the press conference. “But there isno cell [yet] – and certainly not oursynthetic cell – where the function ofevery gene is understood. We don’tknow yet which genes are essential forlife and why. It will be interesting tosee how few components are needed toboot up a synthetic chromosome. Per-haps, all it will take is a lipid vesicle andthe ability to make messenger RNA[mRNA] and ribosomes, but we don’tknow,” Venter wrote in New Scientist.

In their quest to build a cell withthe minimum number of essentialgenes, they chose the strategy of a syn-thetic route because it is very difficultto eliminate multiple genes from a celland you can do only one at a time.“[The idea was] if we could synthesisea bacterial chromosome, we could ac-tually vary the gene content to under-

SOU

RC

E: S

CIE

NC

E EX

PRES

S, M

AY 2

0.

M. MYCOIDES JCVI-SYN1.0 and natural M.mycoides colonies. Bothcell types have the fried-egg colony morphologycharacteristic of mostmycoplasmas. (a) The synthetic cellscontain the gene lacZ,whose expression turnsthe compound X-galapplied on the platecarrying the cells blue. (b) The natural cells lackthis gene and so thecolony remains white. (c) Scanning ElectronMicroscopic image of M. mycoides JCVI-syn 1.0cells. (d) Transmission ElectronMicroscope image ofdividing M. mycoidesJCVI-syn 1.0 cells. (e) and (f) Comparison ofelectron microscopeimages of cellmorphology of M.mycoides JCVI-syn 1.0and natural M. mycoidescells made in 2006. Bothcell types show the sameovoid morphology andgeneral appearance.

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 3 2 F R O N T L I N E

stand the essential genes for life,” ex-plained Venter. In 2003, based on adigitised sequence in a computer rath-er than a copy made by an enzyme, andusing new methods for making error-free DNA at a small level, theyachieved a synthetic DNA of Phi X 174of size 5,000 bp.

“Once we realised that we couldmake 5,000 bp viral size pieces, wethought we at least had the means totry and make serially lots of these piec-es to be able to eventually assemblethem together to make a complete bac-terial chromosome,” Venter said. “Itwas a long route…[and] the team de-veloped methods for synthesising thismegabase chromosome (of M. my-coides) substantially larger than weeven thought we would go after initial-ly,” he added.

T W O B A S I C S T E P SVenter’s team had two basic issues toaddress and solve: the chemistry formaking large DNA molecules and thebiology of ‘booting up’ this new chem-ical entity in a recipient cell. Thephrase ‘booting up’ is used perhaps be-cause of the analogy with a computer;what one is doing is similar to chang-ing the operating system of a computerand then rebooting it.

The most important achievementin this quest, according to Venter, wasthe actual transplanting of a bacterialchromosome from one bacterium toanother, a work that was led by CaroleLartigue. This was in 2007, when thenaked and intact whole genomic DNA(free of all proteins) from M. mycoideswas transplanted into M. capricolumcells and the replicated cell colonywere found to contain the completedonor genome and were free of anydetectable recipient genome sequenc-es.

“I think philosophically, that wasone of the most important papers wehave ever done, because it showed howdynamic life was. And we knew oncethat worked we actually had a chanceto make the synthetic chromosome dothe same. [But] we didn’t know that itwas going to take several years more toget there,” Venter said.

In 2008, the team reported thesynthesis of the 500,000 bp M. gen-italium genome complete with the“watermark” signature to tell the cellsdriven by the synthetic genome apartfrom the natural ones. However, thiswatermark, unlike the present one,was a far simpler one that coded mere-ly the names of the authors. But theirattempts to boot it up were not suc-cessful. This was partly because of theslow growth of M. genitalium andpartly because of the various defencemechanisms in the cell machinery thatare programmed to reject invadinggenes. Apparently, the cell that theywere transplanting into had a nucle-ase, an enzyme, which chewed up thesynthetic DNA and thus preventingsuccessful transplantation. Because ofthe slow growth of the small cell, theteam switched to working with themuch larger M. mycoides genome be-cause the larger cells took only twodays to grow as compared with six-week cycles in the case of the small cell.

Last year they demonstrated thatthey could extract the M. mycoidesnatural chromosome, place it intoyeast, alter the genome, extract it fromthe yeast and transfer it into M. capri-colum. The team had to develop newtechniques to actually grow and clonethe entire bacterial chromosome inyeast. The essential problem was tofind out how to extract a bacterial ge-

nome out of the eukaryotic yeast into aform that could be used to transplantinto a recipient cell.

M E T H Y L A T I O NTransplantation, too, was not a simpletask and this had failed even with thesimple M. genitalium DNA. The prob-lem actually took more than two yearsto solve. They discovered that the DNAin the bacterial cell is methylated andmethylation protects it from beingchewed up by restriction enzymes pre-sent in the cell. So the trick was tomethylate the chromosome taken outof yeast and then it could be trans-planted. Alongside the team also de-veloped techniques to remove therestriction enzyme genes themselvesfrom the M. capricolum cell.

Once that was done, the nakedDNA from the yeast itself could betransplanted. The remaining step wasto achieve the same with the syntheticcopy of the full genome. Having suc-ceeded in this in September 2009, theteam, according to Venter, becameconfident that the next step could beachieved in a few weeks’ time. But itwasn’t to be because the synthesisingtechnique had one error in the millionbp sequence. Just one base pair hadbeen deleted in an essential gene.

Accuracy in the synthesis is essen-tial, points out Venter. There are partsof the genome where even a single er-

CRAIG VENTER, HEAD of the J. Craig Venter Institute, at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., onMay 27. The committee heard testimony from Venter on the developments in synthetic genomics and their implications for health and energy.

MAR

K W

ILSO

N/A

FP

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

F R O N T L I N E 1 3 3

ror cannot be tolerated and there areparts, like where the watermarks havebeen put, where blocks of DNA can beinserted and tolerated. This took threemonths to figure out, and fixing it re-quired developing a new debuggingsoftware with which one could test theaccuracy compared to the natural orwild type DNA.

The process of synthesis itself, thechemistry part of the game, was quitecomplex. To begin with, the research-ers had the sequence to be synthesisedon a computer. The one million bpgenome was partitioned into 1,078overlapping pieces that were 1,080 bplong that could be chemically synthe-sised. These partitions or cassetteswere designed so that a cassette over-lapped with its neighbour by 80 bp.These cassettes were synthesised by aDNA synthesis company, Blue HeronBiotechnology, according to the team’sspecifications.

T H R E E - S T A G E T R I C KA three-stage process was employed tobuild the genome based on their earli-er work which had shown that yeasthad this remarkable capacity to assem-ble as many as 25 pieces, if not more, ata time. The first stage involved taking10 cassettes of the DNA at a time andbuilding 110 segments of 10,000 bpeach. In the second stage, these 10,000bp segments are taken 10 at a time toproduce 11 segments of 100,000 bp(100 kb) each. In the final stage, all the11 segments of 100 kb each were usedto assemble the complete genome inthe yeast cells that grow as an artificialchromosome.

Throughout the process, a piece ofyeast DNA is used as a vector to trickthe yeast cells into recognising the syn-thesised pieces as its own DNA. Soevery time it replicates, it produces an-other copy of the various intermediatesynthetic stretches of DNAs and thecomplete genome at the very end.

The technique actually producedseveral versions of the synthetic ge-nome. For months, transplantationexperiments were done to isolate thesegenomes out and put them into M.capricolum cells with their restriction

enzyme genes removed. The syntheticgenome DNA was transcribed intomRNA, which in turn translated intonew proteins. The M. capricolum ge-nome itself was either destroyed by M.mycoides restriction enzymes or waslost during the billion rounds of cellreplication that the system underwent,according to Venter.

After two to three days, viable M.mycoides cells, which contained onlythe synthetic chromosome, were clear-ly visible as a blue colony in petri dis-hes containing the bacterial growthmedium. But 99 per cent of their at-tempts had failed to achieve this allbecause of single base pair deletion.

U L T I M A T E G O A LThe work, which cost about $40 mil-lion, represents the construction of thelargest synthetic molecule of a definedstructure, the M. mycoides genome be-ing almost double the size of the previ-ously synthesised M. genitaliumgenome. With this success, Venter’steam will now embark on creating theminimal genome, its goal since 1995.“We can now begin working on ourultimate objective of synthesising aminimal cell containing only the genesnecessary to sustain life in its simplestform, which will help us understandhow cells work better,” said Dan Gib-son, the team member who was chieflyresponsible for the synthesis part. Thisthey will do by whittling away at thesynthetic genome and repeating trans-plantation experiments until no moregenes can be disrupted and the ge-nome is as small as possible.

“Our synthetic cell,” wrote Venter,“is a small but highly significant step insynthetic genomics. Without this suc-cess there would be no future for whathas been until now a theoretical field.We have now tools to begin to under-stand cellular life.”

As was mentioned earlier, thisdemonstration of proof of concept im-plies that the techniques evolved couldeasily be applied to produce somethingthat never existed before by, say, in-troducing new genes or removingmany of existing genes. “The advan-tage of synthetic DNA is that it allows

even more radical changes than theengineered genome,” points out Ge-orge Church of Harvard MedicalSchool.

Indeed, according to Venter, histeam is going to try to make syntheticgenomes that carry instructions forbacteria to make flu vaccine. A pro-gramme for this has already beenlaunched with funding from Novartisand the National Institutes of Health(NIH). Also Synthetic Genomics (acompany founded by Venter and theJCVI) is forming a new vaccine com-pany. And these techniques will makethese vaccines in less than 24 hours,instead of weeks and months that cur-rent processes take, says Venter.

Synthetic Genomics also has a pro-gramme with Exxon-Mobil to developnew strains of algae that can effectivelycapture CO2 from the atmosphere orfrom concentrated sources, and makenew hydrocarbons that can go into re-fineries to make normal gasoline anddiesel out of CO2. The approach, ac-cording to Venter, can be used to de-sign new pharmaceuticals, biofuels,and so on.

P A T E N T S & M O N O P O L YThe reaction of the biological commu-nity has, however, been somewhatmixed. “It is cool and has taken a lot ofeffort. But it doesn’t take that muchfurther scientifically,” Alistair Elfick ofEdinburgh University has been quotedas saying in New Scientist. “It is a tech-nical tour-de-force, so it does make ahigh-profile technical point for peoplewho think about designing such tech-nologies,” says Satyajit Rath of the Na-tional Institute of Immunology (NII)in similar vein. “But it teaches us noth-ing profound about [biological] mech-anisms. It does not make anyinteresting science more or less feasi-ble; in fact, my guess is that it does noteven make new technologies more orless feasible, except that some courtsmay use the ‘synthetic gene’ excuse toprovide protection for some gene pat-ents,” he adds.

Indeed, John Sulston of the Uni-versity of Manchester has alreadyvoiced concern that efforts to patent

J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 0

1 3 4 F R O N T L I N E

the first synthetic cell would give itscreator a monopoly on a range of ge-netic engineering techniques andwould inhibit important research. Itwould be recalled that Sulston had arunning battle on intellectual propertywith Venter on the issue of makinggenomic data from the Human Ge-nome Project (HGP) openly available.In HGP, both played crucial roles. “Ihave read some of these patents [relat-ing to Synthia] and theclaims are very, verybroad indeed,” Sulstonhas been quoted as say-ing. “I hope very muchthese patents will not beaccepted because theywould bring genetic en-gineering under the con-trol of the JCVI. Theproblem has becomemuch worse since Iraised the issue 10 yearsago,” Sulston said.

“This is a marvellousadvance, but it doesn’timmediately open upnew studies for the broadcommunity,” says JamesCollins of Boston Uni-versity. “Even if syntheticgenomes become dra-matically cheaper [thanthe present $1 per let-ter], there is still the question of how towrite one. We have a long way to go toreally develop sufficient understand-ing to build an operational genomefrom scratch,” he adds. Also, here thebooting up was achieved with difficul-ty even in closely related species. Itremains to be seen whether cells willaccept the genome of drug making E.coli or biofuel producing or oil-spilleating algae because it would be a fargreater challenge to jump between ve-ry different species.

“From a perspective of scientificpotential, very interesting possibilitiesin the understanding of how largestretches of genetic material are regu-lated open up,” says K. VijayRaghavan,director of the National Centre for Bi-ological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore,taking a more positive view of the de-

velopment. “One of the greatest chal-lenges in gene-regulation is trying tounderstand how large stretches ofDNA interact with each other, partic-ularly in cells such as ours. Once theVenter synthetic experiment becomesapplicable to such contexts, our basicunderstanding will change dramat-ically. This will surely have many bene-ficial applications.”

Given the fact that now there isvirtually a “new spe-cies” out there, allkinds of ethicalquestions will ariseeven though, onemust emphasise, nonew life has beencreated in this ad-vance made by Ven-ter and co. Forexample, therewould be worries ifthere is a syntheticalgae that is let looseinto the environ-ment. Already somegroups have begunto call for moratori-um on syntheticbiology until inter-national rules gov-erning organismsleaving the lab areput in place.

According to Venter, even beforethey undertook the first experiments,they had asked Arthur Kaplan’s teamat the University of Pennsylvania toundertake a review of what were therisks, challenges and ethics of creatingnew species in laboratory work, andthe review took two years, after whichthe team began its work in 1999.

S A F E T Y M E A S U R E SThe ethical difference between creat-ing synthetic cells in research labora-tories and those that are released in theenvironment is significant. Any envi-ronmental release would, therefore,occur only under appropriately strin-gent conditions. Nevertheless, it ispossible that unintended environmen-tal release could happen. However, it isnot easy to keep synthetic cells alive

even under ideal conditions in the lab-oratory. So, in an accidental environ-mental release, synthetic cells well diequickly.

There is also active discussion onbuilding in multiple safeguards in syn-thetic cells. These include giving thema strictly limited lifespan, inserting su-icide genes, incorporating an on/offswitch, making them dependent onnutrients and conditions that are notpresent naturally in the environment,and so on.

In addition to safeguards, it is im-portant to build in unique identifyingmarks, like watermark, so that anydamage can be traced back to the ori-gin. The NIH has called for new guide-lines on how to regulate DNAsynthesis companies to make sure thatnobody is creating new pathogens orrecreating old pathogens. The UnitedStates National Academy of Sciencestoo has produced a report on the issue.

Significantly, in the wake of thisremarkable advance in synthetic biol-ogy, U.S. President Barack Obamawrote to his Bioethics Commission, ledby the University of PennsylvaniaPresident, Amy Gutmann, to study theimplications of this research on the“potential medical, environmental, se-curity and other benefits of this field ofresearch as well as any potentialhealth, security or other risks”. He hasasked the panel to do a six-monthstudy and recommend “any actionsthat the Federal government shouldtake to ensure America reaps the bene-fits of this developing field of sciencewhile identifying appropriate ethicalboundaries and minimising identifiedrisks”. According to Venter, in 2003,the White House initially consideredclassifying his work, which was beingfunded by the U.S. Department of En-ergy, but later decided to make it open.

“Ethical concerns are a matter ofcontinuing debate, but no substantialnew ethical questions come from thisstudy yet. While they will surelyemerge as the technology becomesmore efficient, and these must bewatched out for, as of now, the poten-tial positive aspects stand out,” saysVijayRaghavan. �

JOHN SULSTON OF theUniversity of Manchestervoiced concerns on effortsto patent the first syntheticcell. "(This) would bringgenetic engineering underthe control of the JCVI."

KIE

RAN

DO

HER

TY/R

EUTE

RS

Published on alternate Saturdays.WPP No.CPMG/AP/SD-15/WPP/2008-2010 & MH/MR/South-180/2009-11.Postal Regn. No.TN/ARD/22/09-11. RNI No.42591/84

frontline magazine 18-june-2010

Documents

j u n e

nf r o n t

science biology

synthetic cell

world affairsthailand

progressive policy framework

science technologynow

lack of political